Is Xero stealing MYOB’s future in the cloud?

Xero is a New Zealand based public company (XRO.NZ) that create accounting software that you can access from anywhere, much like hotmail, gmail or your Internet banking. I mention Internet banking here because many Internet users use Internet banking and trust it’s security completely. We think Internet banking is completely safe and secure, no matter how we feel about email security. Both are very secure so the move to online accounting software will take a little longer as users understand their accounting data may be safer online than it is stored on their own computer or server.

An article was written in BRW which highlights the challenges and potential future of this model of software delivery: http://bit.ly/9SNbam and most interesting of all is that Craig Winkler, co-founder of MYOB, which was taken over early 2009 by private equity, is now a major shareholder after an injection of $18M.

For us as computer software users and you as EzyLearn MYOB Training students, MYOB is still the market leader in Australia and you can do our online course for only $199 with 12 months access and unlimited repeats (gratuitous plug). The future is focussed on making it possible to work together more effortlessly with our accounting datafile and take advantage of fantastic data centres that store our information securely, provide data security and a first grade backup service.

Our company wholly embrace cloud computing as I delve into cloud computing for telephony (www.virion.com.au has already been very succesful for our business), as a CRM (currently looking into www.salesforce.com as a means to keep track of clients and correspondence), and for email communications (using Gmail and Google apps). Stay tuned for feedback and comments about our experiences.