This past week’s SaaScon event in San Francisco marked the first conference dedicated to educating end-users about the business benefits of Software-as-a-Service (SaaS).

The vendor response to the event was so strong, that the conference organizers added a track aimed at helping new and established, independent software vendors (ISVs) capitalize on the SaaS movement.

I had the privilege of helping to shape both session agendas, identify conference speakers and moderate many of the panel sessions as a member of the conference advisory board.

While there were some unanticipated audio/video problems due to poor hotel staff and ISV attendance problems due to local traffic, the attendees were nearly unanimously enthusiastic about the quality of the content.

The user-oriented sessions went beyond proselytizing about the virtues of SaaS to dig into the practical steps for successfully deploying this rapidly evolving software alternative in enterprise environments. Many of the sessions used a growing base of customer success stories to suggest industry ‘best practices’.

I moderated the morning keynote panel on emerging market trends that consisted of Ann Winblad, Founder and Partner of Hummer Winblad, a key venture firm in the SaaS market; Tod Loofbourrow, President & CEO, of Authoria, Inc., an on-demand talent management solutions vendor; and Robert Jurkowski, CEO & President, Intacct Corporation, an on-demand enterprise resource management solution vendor.

While Salesforce.com and trends in the customer relationship management (CRM) sector gets most of the attention in the SaaS market, I invited Tod and Bob to participate in the panel so they could educate the attendees about the large-scale deployments they’ve rolled out to their major enterprise customers and the shift they’ve seen in this segment of the market. Ann provided her own perspective on why her firm made early bets on the SaaS market and the widening array of SaaS business plans crossing her desk. One of her bets recently paid off well when Employease, an on-demand human resource management solutions company, was acquired in August by ADP.

I also moderated a panel at the end of the first day of the conference, entitled “Applying SaaS Principles to Meet Your IT Management Requirements.” This panel was composed of Gary Griffiths, V.P. Products, Webex Communications, Inc.; James Maiocco, Chief Executive Officer & Co-Founder, Klir Technologies; Ed Mueller, CMO, Everdream Corporation; and Jay Gardner, VP & General Manager of the On Demand Business Unit, BMC Software Inc.

This session delved into a rapidly evolving segment of the SaaS market, the IT management solutions arena. While the longer standing managed services market continues to struggle, vendors delivering IT management software services are quickly gaining attention from customers. This is because many customers are still reluctant to relinquish the responsibility for managing their operations to a managed service provider (MSP), but would be happy to leverage a service which eliminates the software deployment and administration hassles of traditional management solutions.

I had the privilege of helping to architect the ISV track of SaaScon on the second day of the event, and served as the master of ceremonies and moderator of each of the panel sessions. The goal of the one-day track was to discuss each of the lifecycle challenges facing ISVs–both new net-native ventures and legacy application vendors–seeking to deliver successful SaaS solutions. The agenda included sessions on,

• Selecting the Right Tools, Building Blocks, and Infrastructure for SaaS
• Packaging and Pricing SaaS to Create Competitive Advantage
• Lessons Learned about SaaS Support and Ecosystems from the Gaming Industry
• Overcoming the Data Integration and Migration Problem

SaaScon also generated a significant number of vendor announcements including,

• WebEx’s new Connect ecosystem initiative
• Pervasive and Eloqua’s data integration efforts

Most importantly, SaaScon gained the attention of the Software & Information Industry Association (SIIA) who has agreed to team up to co-locate their Software Strategy Summit with the SaaScon Spring Conference April 17-18, 2007 at the Santa Clara Convention Center.

Anyone who has followed the SaaS market over the past year knows that it is evolving at warp speed. Therefore, you can bet that it will have changed significantly by next April. So, be sure to put the Spring SaaScon conference on your calendar!