TechnologyOne pushes into cloud with new enterprise products

Stan Beer
Wednesday, 22 February 2012 08:35

Australia's largest home grown enterprise software provider TechnologyOne has unveiled its cloud strategy with a suite of new online enterprise products called TechnologyOne Cloud. The strategy includes a future roadmap which according to the company's boss Adrian Di Marco, will transform how enterprises select, try, buy, implement and use software.

'We are going to make enterprise software incredibly simple,' TechOne founder and executive chairman Mr Di Marco said today at the company's 'Evolve' user conference, in front of an audience of more than 1,000 delegates.

TechnologyOne, which has been operating for 24 years, now has more than 900 staff and has traditionally been huge in the local government market space, holding an estimated 50 per cent share in Australia. However, the company has been steadily pushing into other local markets such as financial services, health, education and utilities. Markets that TechOne has steered clear of are manufacturing and retail.

'Today our customers can access our enterprise suite on the Cloud and enjoy reduced operating costs and enormous scalability delivered for one flat annual fee,' Mr Di Marco told delegates to the Evolve conference during his keynote address.

'We are offering an unrivalled breadth and depth of industry capability compared to any other vendor, which will transform our customers' businesses, and make their lives simple because they only have to deal with us for their software, services and infrastructure.

'TechnologyOne Cloud will be available anywhere, on any device - all our customers need is internet access.

'The savings are too compelling to pass up, especially in the wake of the GFC, so there is no turning back,' Mr Di Marco said.

'For us, this announcement closes the loop on TechnologyOne's 'Power of One' business model - we have always developed, sold and maintained all our software, now we are accountable for infrastructure too,' Mr Di Marco said.

Attendees at the Evolve Conference are the first to trial TechnologyOne Cloud, which offers a greatly simplified experience with 80 per cent of the functions available in three clicks or less.

TechnologyOne has established a dedicated user experience (UX) team to ensure future products offer a consistent, easy and enjoyable experience and will invest $150 million in R&D into its Cloud solutions over the next five years.

Part of this investment will fund TechnologyOne's vision of delivering its enterprise software as simple apps via an online store.

He said customers will be able to buy apps individually and update them easily using their own profile, give feedback and leave comments for others to see, making TechnologyOne totally accountable and providing invaluable information for its users and developers.

'This will transform the relationship with our customers and our products, marking the end of software releases, which will be replaced by continual updates driven by customer feedback,' Mr Di Marco said.

'Customers will have a choice about when they apply updates and will be able to trial apps using TechnologyOne Cloud infrastructure.

'We have the resources to realise this market-changing vision because we have Australia's largest enterprise software research and development (R&D) centre in Brisbane,' Mr Di Marco said.

The company was cautious to reassure customers that they could choose if, when and how they used TechnologyOne Cloud.

'We will always put our customers first, because we deeply understand our vertical markets and have learned a lot about what they want from Cloud Computing in the last 12 months,' Mr Di Marco said.

'TechnologyOne will continue to provide customers with choices and develop software to make their lives easier.'