siondo

Siondo is a London-based software service provider which is owned by Christian Steiner and Jason Devenney, the two founding partners, principal operators, and investors. Siondo operates its own offshore development center in India and all software services are hosted in SAS Type II server environments in the United Kingdom and the United States.

Siondo aims to simplify the way SMBs do business by delivering high-quality and cutting edge software solutions at the best value for money. Siondo's objective is to position itself as a global "One Stop Shop" for on demand software solutions that are fast to implement, easy to use and can grow as a company grows.

Siondo is currently managed and operated by Jason Devenney (BSc Hons) and Christian Steiner (BA Hons, MSc, PhD Candidate). After they met at University in 1995, both Jason and Christian had worked as IT and business consultants delivering a number of web-based projects to European industries. Prior to Siondo in 2003, they have set-up Outhouse, a consultancy-based company which has been generating the revenue necessary to venture and operate Siondo under their own steam till date.

Jason (CTO) deals with all technical aspects of Siondo. Jason's background in this area stems from his roles as systems analyst, designer and developer at several UK companies. His activities at Siondo involve the day to day interaction with Siondo's offshore development team (17) to ensure that all outsourced functions and processes are delivered to the highest quality standards.

As CEO for Siondo, Christian is responsible for the day-to-day running of Siondo on a strategic level, board and investor liaison, and the formulation and implementation of the marketing and sales strategy. Christian gained his industrial experience while working as controller and financial auditor in various companies based in the UK and Germany between 1996 and 2003. His educational background enables him to engage in functions such as business consultancy, business process analysis and subsequent application designs.

Siondo very much works like an online shopping basket for web-based software applications. All Siondo services are delivered through a secure monthly subscription model over the Internet. Subscribers do not take ownership of the software but pay for using it in advance. All users need to run Siondo is a PC or MAC with a Web browser and an Internet connection.

Siondo does not compete ‘directly' in a saturating market against desktop-based products such as Microsoft Money, Quicken, Sage 50, QuickBooks Pro, MYOB, or Mamut E5, but against only a few market players who have switched to the SaaS (Software as a Service) method to distribute web-based software services to their end customers.

In a market that has neither standards nor market leaders, a handful of on-demand companies - salesforce.com, RightNow Technologies, Netsuite, etc. to name a few - are gaining adoption with the "M" in SMB. Focusing on medium-sized businesses with 100+ employees, also large software companies like SAP and Oracle are retrofitting their programs with the offering of "SAP CRM On-Demand" and "Siebel CRM On-Demand" respectively. All these big players have so far failed to address small companies with 1-10 employees - the "S" in the SMB software market. So why should Siondo succeed?

Software solutions that have been designed for medium-sized companies clearly do not work for small companies including start-ups and "one person bands". Siondo software is different because it has been designed and tested by SMB for SMB. A few SaaS providers like Netbooks, OneBiz, Xero, or Kashflow claim the same and are gaining adoption in the SMB market. However, these companies still represent the first generation of internet accounting applications including online cashbooks that simplify the posting of sales invoices and expenditures for small businesses. Siondo does much more and delivers not just accounting but combines all operational functions into a single ERP software as a service model.

In contrast to the few SMB software vendors above, Siondo completely changes the way business software is sold and used today. Siondo prices its services in the middle of the market scale and has decided to abandon annoying user licenses, complex contracts, and the need for subscribers to pay for back ups and standard support.

Together with Siondo's global-ready distribution platform and the embedded modularity principles, Siondo see the current SMB market players as individual service competitors rather than direct business competitors and reserve the right to be among the first-movers in the Platform as a Service industry (PaaS).