Tonight Show SaaS

Jay Leno's first monologue back on The Tonight Show. NBC photo

I think it’s interesting to watch what happens when a company changes a familiar brand, such as when The Tonight Show switched hosts last year from Jay Leno to Conan O’Brien. Unfortunately or fortunately for both Leno and O’Brien, their new gigs did not deliver the audiences that NBC expected. O’Brien exited with $33 million (plus $12 million for his staff of almost 200) while Leno moves back to his old job beginning tonight. Even after five years of preparing the audience and the show for the change, it didn’t produce the expected results.

Technology brands usually don’t suffer as much from change, because technology is expected to change and it must change to continually improve. Can you provide an example similar to the reversal of The Tonight Show in tech? Steve Jobs returned to Apple with great results, but few tech products were modified with improved technology and then returned to their former version due to lower-than-expected sales.

We are now experiencing a shift in computing from on-premises systems to cloud-based systems that is much more significant and far-reaching than The Tonight Show example. Here are just a few recent articles pointing to the change, in addition to the thousands that have been written over the past few years confirming enterprise transition to cloud computing:

• “Goldman Sachs: Shift toward cloud unstoppable” (CNET News)
• “Piper Jaffray Sees Gold Rush In Cloud Software” (InformationWeek)
• “Beyond CRM: SaaS slips into the mainstream” (Computerworld)

Lindsey Vonn with Jay Leno on The Tonight Show. NBC photo.

The timing was perfect to kick off Jay Leno’s return to The Tonight Showright after the Olympics, which were also broadcast on NBC. He is a comeback champion like guest Lindsey Vonn, downhill gold medalist and Olympic rock star.

According to this article on ChannelWeb, “CIOs See Big Cloud Computing Shifts in 2010,” the timing is perfect for cloud computing as well. The economy, budget cuts, and the rapid pace of change in business are fueling the need for affordable, flexible, and easy-to-deploy cloud-based information systems that move with your needs.

Kevin Eubanks

As your host of Todd Lane's Tonight Show, I’m proud to introduce these honored guests who will play in your environment and enhance your business just like Kevin Eubanks and The Tonight Show Band, or like the stellar performance by guitarist John McLaughlin in this video:

• Enterprise mashup dashboards such as mashmatrix Dashboard provide rapid, personalized development of dashboards from any web-facing data source; get a complete view of all the information you need on one screen without having to switch between screens and applications.
• SaaS business intelligence (BI) applications from Birst and eiVia provide quick reporting and predictive analytics for decision-making.
• Enterprise relationship management solutions such as BranchIt help your business leverage relationships that colleagues may have with prospective customer or partner contacts.
• Price optimization applications from companies such as Mimiran help you avoid leaving money on the table in pricing your products or services.
• Enterprise brand management solutions from Attensity360 aggregate, measure, and analyze news media and consumer opinion from print and social-media sources to yield insights that enable sales, marketing, PR, and executives to better understand their customers, competitors, influencer communities, industry trends and issues, the press, and the investment community.
• Enterprise cloud databases such as TrackVia help you quickly design and deploy cloud-based applications to solve business problems.
• Integration products from Pervasive Software and Sesame Software provide data exchange and interoperability between legacy on-premises and software-as-a-service (SaaS) applications.
• Cloud-based single sign-on systems from companies such as TriCipher provide a secure, single login for a user to access all authorized cloud-based applications.

Another difference between The Tonight Show reshuffle and the transition to cloud-based systems is that we won’t turn back from the cloud. We’ll see which way it goes with The Tonight Show. Furthermore, if you want to implement the above cloud-based solutions, it won’t take five years of preparation and $45 million to exit if you decide to make a change.

As host of your business audience, what cloud-based solutions do you want to showcase to drive your approval ratings over the top?