9. Google Spreadsheet - The Shape of Things to Come?

Many people will evaluate SaaS by the applications they use most often. And for most people, spreadsheets and word processors are where they live. Google Spreadsheets (GS) perfectly demonstrates the strengths and weaknesses of SaaS applications.

Before I get into the GS discussion, let me first say that creating a SaaS spreadsheet that compares favorably with a desktop spreadsheet like Excel is probably the most difficult technical challenge there is in SaaS.

The desktop spreadsheet has the benefit of direct access to the computer's CPU and very fast access to the hard drives. Desktop spreadsheets have had years to add functionality and iron out the bugs.

SaaS spreadsheets have to work within a browser which slows everything down. Their access to disk space is through an Internet connection, which is much slower than accessing a local hard drive. And they're new - they simply haven't had the same number of man-hours devoted to developing functionality and fixing bugs.

However, it's easier for SaaS applications to offer collaborative features.

That being said, let's review the pros and cons of Google Spreadsheets (GS), cons first:

You'll notice, as you move around the sheet, that it's not as smooth or responsive as, say, Microsoft Excel. You'll also notice that GS has a simpler interface than Excel. That's because some significant features, like graphing, are missing completely.



As you build your spreadsheet you'll find yourself missing some of the elegant touches that Excel has. Things like double-clicking on the divider to automatically adjust a column width. Or dragging a cell to copy a formula or value. Aligning a cell takes two clicks, not one. None of these will prevent you from building your spreadsheet, but everything takes a little longer.

GS lacks virtually all of the output control that Excel has. When you print, your document will show your browser's header and footer. The best way to avoid that is to export your document to a PDF file and print from there. Kludgy at best.

The good news is that GS harnesses the collaborative power of the Internet to offer collaboration, discussion, and publishing options. Collaborating allows you to share your spreadsheet with anyone you want so they can view or edit it. You can also have real-time chats while in your spreadsheet. Changes you make are instantly seen by anyone participating in the discussion.

Publishing allows you to post some or all of your sheet in a blog or web page. In the example below, I've published 70 cells from a GS spreadsheet. The spreadsheet shows some financial information for six public companies. Note that this spreadsheet will update every 5 minutes automatically.



Google harnesses its on-line strengths to create two new functions: googlefinance() and googlelookup(). Googlefinance(x,y) is used to generate all the values in the PE, Price, High52 and Low52 columns. Give it a stock symbol (such as ORCL) and an attribute (such as PE) and it finds the most recent value. The values in the four financial columns above are obtained with the formula "=googlefinance(b2,c$3)".

Googlelookup(a,b) is used to find information on a topic. Set "a" as the topic and "b" as the information you want and googlelookup() will try to find an answer for you. In the spreadsheet above, I've used "googlelookup(a3,g$3)" to find the number of employees for each company name. Googlelookup() automatically creates relevant footnotes which you'll see when you scroll down.

Collaboration, discussions, publishing, and new functions: this is slick stuff. It may be enough to allow some people to replace Excel. Others, of course, will stay with Excel...for now.

The trend is clear, though. As developers find ways to make SaaS applications more functional and more polished an increasing number of people will make SaaS their home.

I'll introduce you to another spreadsheet in my next article that attempts to mimic Excel!

8. Parallels: Running Windows on a Mac

So there I am, using my shiny new MacBook Pro and enjoying it. When along comes a problem. I find that I HAVE to use a Windows product. Now what?

One (sub-optimal) solution is to use Apple's Boot Camp. This allows you to boot your Mac as either a, well, Mac or boot it as a Windows computer. Yech. This means closing all of your Mac programs and then rebooting and then waiting for Windows to start. And then reversing it all when you want to get back to your Mac applications. This is clumsy at best. There's gotta be a better way.

And there is: use Parallels and simply run Windows applications in another Mac window (see below).



The screen shot is taken from my MacBook Pro. I'm running iTunes in the back window, Blogger in a Firefox session, and Parallels in the front window. You can see the Mac menu at the bottom.

Parallels creates a "virtual machine" that runs just like any other Mac program. When you run Parallels, a Mac window opens and Windows runs inside it. Windows is fooled by Parallels into thinking that it's got its own machine. It has its own hard drive (a Mac file), its own screen (the Mac window), access to the speakers, USB ports and all network hardware including wireless. Windows applications simply run inside the Mac window.

And they run lickety-split, too.

Best news? You don't have to re-boot each time you want to switch operating systems.

Here's my preferred configuration (see below). I run Parallels in full-screen mode on a second monitor attached to my MacBook. It's like having two machines running at the same time.



I can't emphasize how slick Parallels is. It's also very easy to install and not expensive.

If I was Apple, I'd ditch BootCamp (like, now!) and sell Parallels. Better yet, I'd buy the company!

Okay, now that I've got that off my chest, I'll get back to talking about SaaS applications in my next article.

7. Intuit Gets SaaS Right

I introduced 10 SaaS applications in my last article. However, as nice as they are and as useful as they are, none of them are the kind of heavy-duty applications that organizations use all day, every day, to get their primary job done. Which begs the question:

Are there any fully-featured SaaS applications?

QuickBooks Online Edition (QBOE) from Intuit provides the answer: yes.

QBOE is an integrated accounting package. It includes billing and accounts receivable, bill paying and accounts payable, general ledger and financial reporting, payroll, and other related accounting functions. It's pure SaaS: you don't download and install it; you can run it from any supported browser (more on this later); you pay a monthly fee that includes your usage and support.

It looks and feels as sophisticated and elegant as any traditional accounting application including things like incremental searches in lookup fields and pull-down menus. It's responsive as you move from field to field. It saves and loads information with virtually no perceptable delay. You quickly forget that you're using a browser-based application.



QBOE prints clean reports that run very quickly. It prints checks that align to pre-printed forms - tough to do from a browser. Reports can be saved in an Excel format or emailed.

In addition to its excellent functionality, QBOE provides a large amount of assistance on each screen. And yet the assistance isn't obtrusive. It does this by providing the help at the bottom of the browser page. The usable screen is at the top (see the graphic above) and all of the help links are at the bottom (see the graphic below).



And because it's a SaaS application, QBOE can be accessed from anywhere. I use it in my office, on the road, at home. My staff use it from the office but can also use it from home if they need to. My bookkeeper uses it from her office. My accountant accesses it from his office. We don't have to email files or move CDs around. We're always working with the current data.

My experience with QBOE has been, on the whole, positive. But it does have two weaknesses.

The first is availability. There were two occurrences last week when I couldn't access QBOE. The QBOE site had a "temporarily unavailable" message. This is completely unacceptable for a SaaS application as it leaves its users stranded. SaaS developers take note: your product MUST be designed for 24/7/365 up-time. Otherwise you will inconvenience your customers and shake the confidence of potential customers.

QBOE's second weakness is that it only runs in Internet Explorer running on Windows computers. This was a bit of a problem for me as you'll recall that I do all of my SaaS work on a MacBook Pro and I prefer FireFox as a browser. I suspect that this QBOE restriction was made several years ago to allow for the high level of functionality that was their primary design goal. I believe that new SaaS applications should be able to meet the QBOE usability goal across all browsers and operating systems because of the advancement in browser capabilities.

By the way, I'm very happy to report that I have been running QBOE on my Mac. How? I've tapped into the product of some very smart people - read about them in my next article.