I often have the privilege of being briefed by companies about their strategies and services prior to them being publicly announced. In many cases, these briefings involve companies which are still in ‘stealth’ mode and I must wait patiently until they reveal themselves to the rest of the world before I can talk about them.

One such company is Pathworks Software. I met its President/CEO, Anthony Nemelka, at the SIIA On-Demand Conference last November and was immediately impressed with his vision and company strategy. That strategy and the company’s initial set of solutions were publicly announced at the DEMO ’08 conference.

At that event, Pathworks Software unveiled the company’s flagship on-demand customer support solution, Helpstream. Pathworks’ new offering is newsworthy because it combines many of the best practices of the open source and Web 2.0 worlds to create a potentially powerful Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) solution to meet today’s help desk needs.

From the open source world, Pathworks Software borrows the freeware idea of giving away its solution for free in favor of funding its operations with ongoing support fees rather than software license fees.

From the Web 2.0 world, Pathworks Software has borrowed the ‘power of community’ idea by building collaboration tools into its Helpstream solution to give users the ability to capture and utilize customer support information from a wider array of sources.

Throw in web-based case management and knowledge management systems, and you have a SaaS help desk platform that could also become a generator of best practice benchmarks over time.

Nemelka has a firm handle on the market opportunity based on stints at IBM, Adobe, Epiphany and PeopleSoft. The company is funded by Foundation Capital and Mohr Davidow Ventures, along with Roger Sippl, the founder of Informix and Vantive.

Pathworks Software’s approach has also gained market validation from its six-month beta that generated over 2000 workspace registrations and 6000 active registered users. Converting these users to paying customers will be essential to Pathworks Software’s long-term success.

In the short-term, the company’s biggest obstacle might be a couple of minor branding issues. Enter http://www.pathworkssoftware.com/ in your browser and you land at http://www.helpstream.biz/, which could confuse some potential customers. And given the company’s SaaS orientation, it might be more appropriate to call the company Pathworks ‘Services’.

However, the big picture opportunities for Pathworks Software far outweigh these minor concerns.

THINKstrategies’ research and consulting work clearly show a rapid rise in customer receptivity towards solutions like Helpstream. Pathworks Software is in a great position to capitalize on this market opportunity.

If Pathworks Software succeeds, it will be another bellweather of the historic migration of companies from on-premise to on-demand solutions.