MYOB confirms May cloud launch
MYOB will launch a cloud-based product package for small businesses in the Australian and New Zealand market in the coming weeks, according to its managing director, Julian Smith.
The new product is specifically aimed at small businesses wanting an easier way to manage invoices and "do the books", according to Smith, and all data would be stored in the country the product was purchased in. It would be offered as a subscription on a month-by-month or yearly basis, he said, and is slated for launch in early May.
Despite a media report that the product would be launched on Microsoft's Azure platform, Smith said that was not the case, although the company would look at such an offering down the track. Microsoft Azure is due to be launched in April.
According to Smith, the cloud-based product had been in development for some time.
Smith said the company had one million clients in Australia and New Zealand. Around 80,000 of those are running one of MYOB's current cloud-based offerings he added, and around 60,000 of those were in Australia. These offerings were for specific functions, not like the package to be released in May which will deal with a larger number of MYOB functions.
The news follows an advertisement placed on job website Seek.com.au by MYOB on 26 March, which advertised for an infrastructure technical lead for software-as-a-service (SaaS).
The person hired would be "responsible for managing the MYOB SaaS infrastructure including the IT operations and third party service providers", according to the advertisement. "This role will be involved in driving the SaaS infrastructure technology direction and responsible for the successful execution of this strategy," it said
MYOB also announced today that it had entered into a supplier agreement with New Zealand-based provider BankLink for the supply of bank transaction data to be used in a range of new MYOB products.
According to MYOB, BankLink works with over 100 financial institutions and 4000 accountants in New Zealand and Australia, managing more than 10 million transactions per month from over 350,000 accounts.