When I first thought about doing a blog about QuickBooks, I was a little stumped as to what I could possibly talk about. I know QuickBooks is an accounting software, almost 90% of small/medium size businesses use it, but let’s face it… it’s kinda boring! It’s kind of like explaining the romantic side of advanced calculus. That’s where you couldn’t be more wrong, my narrow-minded friend!
Having just got back from Intuit headquarters, where they held the IPP CloudJam, a 3 day geekfest, for developers and other like-minded people for the newly announced Intuit Partner Platform. IPP is Intuit opening their kimono to the developer community and showing that they too are ready to bring their offerings into the next era of software development, SaaS. SaaS, or Software as a Service, is bypassing the traditional approach of selling software on a disc, loading that software and waiting for the next release to roll around. Instead, software is accessed through “the cloud” (the mystical term that geeks like to use to refer to the Internet.)
Partners are encouraged to develop software that can be accessed from anywhere, anytime on any platform using the development tools of your choice to integrate with Intuit’s core product offerings. This opens up a whole new paradigm (I hate the word pardigm, but I couldn’t think of a better word) of software options that can be used to manage your business. There are already some front-runners in my opinion of companies that are already doing this and I will write about them later. One in particular that I see a great future for is Method Integration, www.methodintegration.com. They are already make web access to QuickBooks data via a realtime sync that will make CRM software integration with QuickBooks obsolete.
I have seen the future of QuickBooks, and friends, it is not boring! Contact your local QuickBooks Pro Advisor or Intuit Solution Provider for more information.
