The same goes for good cheese.
I was traveling in Europe recently and I worked with two of my EMEA peers, David Rowe and Julien Codorniou, to meet with some other companies in the region. First of all, there are some absolutely great start-ups in EMEA and it was a thrill to visit with them. But what really caught my attention was the great SaaS applications that are getting serious traction in EMEA. And guess what, they are all on Microsoft .NET.
In Paris, I had the pleasure to have lunch with Philippe Amand, a great Thai meal by the way. Philippe's new company is idylis, at http:\\www.idylis.com, uh, yeah, it's in French. Philippe has built business solutions before. He built the French product Ciel and sold it to Sage back in 1992 and continued with Sage for some years. But with the emergence of the ASP trend in 2000, he saw the opportunity for making ERP real easy to buy and consume via the web, and he built it all on the Microsoft stack.
When asked why his team chose Microsoft as the platform, his response was that it was easiest and quickest platform to build with. They evaluated all of the alternatives, and went with Microsoft. Many are making the same choice throughout the world. In fact, if you are looking for an easy, and cost effective way to get cooking on the Microsoft stack, take a look at the new SaaS on-ramp program. Pascal Mercier, one of the investors in Idylis, also joined us for lunch. Pascal, who is with aeliosfinance, provided some insights into the French venture community, especially in regards to software and high tech. Thank you Pascal.
After a quick Chunnel train ride to London, I had the honor to meet with David Terrar. I was excited to meet with David for a couple of reasons. First of all, David is one of the Enterprise Irregulars, which is a group of folks who have been building, deploying and working with business apps for some time, but are engaged and watching the current transformation of business systems in our connected world. Secondly, David is working with a rapidly growing SaaS ERP solution called Twinfield. David hosted me at the Institute of Directors in the heart of London, which was an excellent place to meet.
Twinfield, like Idylis, chose the Microsoft stack for their SaaS ERP solution. David and I swapped stories about building ERP solutions over the past 15 years or so and he was able to give me some of the background behind Twinfield. Well, I discussed good design in my Design Matters blog posted earlier this month, and with a well built SaaS ERP solution, design does matter. Many of the Twinfield team worked on CODA, which is a well respected financial solution. Building solid business solutions takes a development team with solid domain and technical expertise and by looking at the Twinfield solution, their team has both. On a final note, don't miss David's post on our meeting on his blog site.
