THE JOURNAL REPORT: SMALL BUSINESS

Q&A: How Web-Hosted Software Evolved for Small Business
By ROGER CHENG

When it comes to on-demand software, also known as software as a service, few people know more about the subject than Mike Braun. He helped developed the strategy for small businesses a decade ago when he worked at International Business Machines Corp. He's now chief executive officer of Intacct Corp., which provides financial, supply-chain management and other business software through online delivery. We spoke to him about the evolution of Web-hosted software and its adoption by small businesses.

How did the idea of software as a service come about?
At IBM, we had been doing [information technology] outsourcing for large companies for a number of years very successfully. In talking to our small-business customers, we had this revelation that if the value of outsourcing was high for a large company, it should be even higher for a small company. Small companies lacked IT expertise, staff, money, all the things you need to run your own IT operation. Given that it was 1998, we couldn't implement it the same way [as large businesses]. That's what's led to the [software as a service] idea.

SEE ARTICLE