News

The UK's Software as a Service vendors are setting aside their rivalry and working together to raise public awareness of the benefits SaaS and cloud computing for industrial and public sector applications.

Hamish Edwards of Xero instigated, almost exactly a year ago, a regular meeting of the UK SaaS accounting players.  A number of us including Duane Jackson of Kashflow, Mark Davies of e-conomic, Chris Poll of Validis, Dave Turner of CODA2go, and David Terrar on behalf of D2C and Twinfield have been getting together informally.  We wanted to put aside the competitive element between us and see what we could do to work together to promote awareness of the SaaS topic and address some of the key issues as a group, rather than individually. 

Eventually we decided to formalise the group under the guidance of Intellect, the organization set up to represent the UK's technology industry.  Intellect was created in 2002, but can trace its history back 75 years to the British Radio Manufacturers Association.   They have over 800 member companies, 500 of which are SMEs.  

The Intellect SaaS group has been widened from just accounting to cover all SaaS application software, and the aims are to:

• publically raise awareness about the benefits of SaaS.
• connect with media and industry leaders to enhance their understanding of SaaS.
• to act as an independent point of contact for anyone interested in SaaS.
• to act as a forum to meet and network with others with an interest in SaaS.

The group will work closely with Intellect’s existing Software Group.  At the second formal meeting of the group today, on March 24th, Hamish Edwards of Xero was confirmed as Chair, and our CEO David Terrar was confirmed as Vice Chair. 

The Intellect SaaS Group's web page is:
http://www.intellectuk.org/content/view/4857/136/

If anyone is interested in finding out more, please contact:

Carrie Hartnell
Head of Industry Strategy
T 020 7331 2007
E carrie.hartnell@intellectuk.org