Cloudforce London preview: CODA2Go

Salesforce.com's Cloudforce comes to London tomorrow morning. One of the key announcements will be a new version of CODA2Go, veteran accounting software developer CODA's on-demand ledger suite. Two years in the making, CODA2Go demonstrates what's possible when the bulk of the 'plumbing' is already done. Tomorrow, CODA will announce a full suite of accounting ledgers including reporting and dashboard presentation the company claims is attracting interest from large organizations.

Up to now, the assumption has been that transactional systems would remain the purview of the on-premise vendors. Initial interest for CODA2Go indicates that presumption may no longer hold true. As always we will need to wait and see how the market responds beyond the initial excitement.

On the video, Dave Turner, CODA's group marketing director explains that by having access to the Force.com platform, the company has been able to concentrate on building business logic and so come to market much faster than might be expected.

Comparisons will be with SAP Business ByDesign which came to market amid a flurry of interest in the fall of 2007. Since then, BYD has languished as SAP figures out how it goes to market and re-engineer for scaling up the user base.

CODA can draw directly upon the Salesforce.com customer base. Its marketing effort is therefore more cost effective than that of its competitors who have to plow fresh furrows."Tapping into the Salesforce.com customer base is so much easier than having to start from scratch," says Turner. "We've been pleasantly surprised to find customers from the UK, Israel, US and Australia requesting information with comparatively little marketing effort required on our part."

In the video, Turner explains the background, progress to date and forward roadmap for the service.

[Disclosure: CODA is a current consulting client but not for CODA2Go]