Intuit revivifies QuickBase

In November 1999 Intuit acquired QuickBase, Web-based collaboration software. In the ensuing eight years, QuickBase has been barely a blip on Intuit's balance sheet or the software-as-a-service market.

Now, the $2.6 billion Intuit has rediscovered QuickBase and is putting some resources behind it. The company added 50,000 users since January, for a total of 225,000 subscribers to date. Customers include 53 of the Fortune 100, twelve customers have more than 2,000 users, according to Bill Lucchini, vice president and general manager of QuickBase. Previously, Lucchini managed Intuits QuickBooks On Line Edition, which serves 110,000 companies and 270,000 users.

"We haven't leveraged QuickBase and [Intuit's] core expertise in search marketing and channel management," Lucchini said. "But, the opportunity is great--people have tons of inefficient processes." QuickBase is primarily used for collaborative project management, and has a base of more than 200 pre-built applications, such as sales management, registration for conference attendees, order management, resource scheduling and databases. QuickBase pricing starts at $249 per month for up to 10 users.

After years of relative dormancy, QuickBase is engaging the market at a time when SaaS is more accepted, and far more competitors exist, ranging from small startups like Coghead, DabbleDB and eUnifyDB to giants like salesforce.com, Microsoft and Google, Lucchini said.

"None of the startups have traction, so we can learn from them," he claimed. The same could have been said about salesforce.com eight years ago, and we know how that turned out. For starters, QuickBase would be smart to offer a free version of the service to spread seeds around the market and become part of the SaaS conversation.