Five cloud computing startups to watch out for
The May BizSpark event in Paris, Microsoft and technology venture capitalists had the chance to assess the upcoming wares from Europe’s brightest young hopefuls in the software development world.
With cloud computing dominating the IT news headlines, surveys and analysts’ attentions, the bulk of the development houses were presenting cloud computing technology and business models.
The following companies had to present to a panel of experts from Microsoft and the European venture capital community. They were all impressive and will no doubt begin to shape the marketplace.
Money Dashboard
Based in Scotland, Money Dashboard proves that no matter what goes wrong, a strong business sector will get back up and win. Banking and financial services in the UK have taken a battering in the credit crisis, especially in Scotland where Royal Bank of Scotland required emergency government funding in order to survive.
But the Scottish cloud-based financial services model looks to have real potential. The ultimate aim is to provide a cloud-based service that enables users to use the internet for more than the budget management that they currently do and instead harness the power of the internet to manage and generate their own wealth.
Money Dashboard provides the user with a single interface for all their financial services, no matter the provider, easing the management of personal funds and ending the nightmare of having to remember half a dozen registration details. Money Dashboard’s business model is to act as a trusted middleman between the consumer and financial service providers, guiding the financial service provider towards targeted users in a lead-generation business model. Views of the Azure-based interface were impressive and the business model makes sense, in fact it has been tried before by an Asia Pacific banking group, but it was too early to market.
No Excuse Accounting
This Spanish smartphone application is pitched at the vital contractors market, which is a valuable marketplace in Spain and the UK. The company claims that contractors such as builders, plumbers; electricians and plasterers spend an extra working day of the week doing their essential administration such as sending out invoices.
This application allows pre-prepared accounting documents and invoices to be created, sent and managed from a smartphone. There are already a wide number of PC-based applications, but this could be the first smartphone application; and contractors are major users of smartphones.
The business model is that once a user registers for and downloads the application they are charged on a transactional basis every time a document is sent via the application. It has been designed for Microsoft and Apple smartphones and can already be downloaded from the iPhone Apstore and Microsoft Windows Marketplace.
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Category: New Products, Resources, Startups, Strategy, Tools
