Phil Wainewright provided a very interesting analysis of Intalio’s new ‘hybrid’ Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) and cloud computing offering which echos the approach I suggested last Fall.

My original blog was inspired by the belief that technology is advancing at a fast enough rate to make it possible to offer a fully contained SaaS ‘appliance’ deployable behind the firewall to alleviate customer concerns regarding data security, service availability and/or performance.

While some of my friends at Salesforce.com said my idea was crazy, my blog post prompted many SaaS and cloud computing vendors to comment that they were already offering flexible deployment options to satisfy various customer preferences.

Of course, the key to this go-to-market strategy is the ability to lock-down the code base so that the SaaS vendor is only supporting one version of the its solution, no matter where it is is deployed.

By putting their … Read More »

THINKstrategies announced today that OpenAir, Inc. has been named the latest winner of the Best of SaaS Showplace (BoSS) Awards program, which is aimed at promoting the measurable business benefits being delivered by today’s Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) solutions.

The BoSS Awards program is the latest initiative by THINKstrategies to bring attention to SaaS and cloud computing companies which are producing tangible business benefits for specific user organizations. These benefits include increased sales, lower costs, higher customer satisfaction, faster operations, and greater profitability.

OpenAir, a NetSuite Inc. company, is a leading provider of SaaS-based services automation software, including professional services automation (PSA) and project portfolio management (PPM) solutions.

Click here to read about how OpenAir’s SaaS solution helped Bluewolf Group and Metricstream better manage their professional service operations so they could achieve their business objectives.

Click here to read more about the BoSS Awards and to nominate … Read More »

I started this past week in Las Vegas attending the two-day Enterprise Cloud Summit at Interop where a crowd of 200-300 people converged to learn about the rapidly evolving cloud computing phenomena from a cross-section of speakers from established players and virtual start-ups. 

This might not seem like a lot of attendees, but it was about ten times as many people as those who attended the Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) track of Interop. And, the cloud crowd grew even bigger at the end of the first day of the Summit when an ‘unconference’ CloudCamp was held which featured a variety of ‘birds-of-a-feather’ style discuss groups fueled by plenty of oversized cookies.

The cloud computing theme also extended into the main-tent portion of Interop with the keynote sessions on the first day of the conference also focused on the topic. These sessions permitted HP, IBM and SAP to … Read More »

THINKstrategies announced today that Plex Systems has been named the latest winner of the Best of SaaS Showplace (BoSS) Awards program.

The BoSS Awards program was announced in January 2009 as the latest initiative by THINKstrategies to bring attention to SaaS and cloud computing companies which are producing tangible business benefits for specific user organizations. These benefits include increased sales, lower costs, higher customer satisfaction, faster operations, and greater profitability.

Plex Systems, the developer of the Plex Online SaaS solution for the manufacturing sector, has been selected as the latest winner of the BoSS Award because of the quantifiable business benefits its solution has generated for a wide array of companies.

Click here to read about the specific customer case examples of Plex Systems’ business benefits which led to the company winning a BoSS Award.

Click here to learn more about the BoSS Awards.

Google’s latest service outage this past week generated a new round of attention and debate regarding the viability of the ‘cloud computing’ movement.

Although Google’s service disruption raises legitimate concerns about the reliability of today’s web-based solutions, the extent of the press coverage also demonstrated how pervasive the cloud computing movement has become.

The incident was not only reported and analyzed in the IT trade pubs, but in all the major business journals as well. This level of coverage clearly shows that SaaS and cloud computing are no longer peripheral trends, but have become popular alternatives to legacy software and traditional systems.

Another indication of this trend is the latest market forecast from Gartner, who I like to call a ‘lagging indicator’, which predicted last week that the SaaS market will equal $9.6 billion by the end of 2009, a 21.9 percent jump over 2008 revenue of $6.6 billion. Gartner forecasts that … Read More »

THINKstrategies announced today that Makana Solutions has been named the latest winner of the Best of SaaS Showplace (BoSS) Awards program, which is aimed at promoting the measurable business benefits being delivered by today’s Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) solutions. 

Makana Solutions is a leading provider of on-demand sales compensation management solutions for small- and mid-size businesses. A case study example of Makana’s measurable benefits is Wilson Tile and Stone, a leading residential and commercial building materials provider.

Click here to read about how Makana Solutions helped Wilson Tile and Stone achieve its sales objectives.

Click here to learn more about the BoSS Award program or to submit an application for an award.

As the idea of cloud computing gains greater attention in the tech industry and among business pubs, there is a brewing debate about whether organizations can create their own ‘private clouds’ to achieve their unique corporate objectives.

My latest commentary in E-Commerce Times discusses the pro’s and con’s regarding the idea of private clouds.

While Microsoft’s recent announcement that it had experienced its first down quarter in terms of revenues and profits generated plenty of headlines in the business press, a surge in the sales of Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) solutions aimed at chief financial officers (CFOs) deserves even greater attention.

Two SaaS announcements from NetSuite and Plex Systems clearly illustrate this trend.

NetSuite announced yesterday that its total revenue for the first quarter of 2009 was $41.6 million, a 22% increase over the first quarter of 2008. In my view, NetSuite’s success is due to a combination of factors. The company has done a better job of packaging, pricing, positioning and promoting its solution to CFOs. It has made its offering more modular, which in turn has made the pricing more attractive. It has also more effectively targetted CFOs who are at a crossroads between starter kits like QuickBooks and complex systems like … Read More »

THINKstrategies announced today that PHASE 2 International has been named the latest winner of the Best of SaaS Showplace (BoSS) Awards program, which is aimed at promoting the measurable business benefits being delivered by today’s Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) solutions.

The BoSS Awards program was announced in January 2009 as the latest initiative by THINKstrategies to bring attention to SaaS and cloud computing companies which are producing tangible business benefits for specific user organizations. These benefits include increased sales, lower costs, higher customer satisfaction, faster operations, and greater profitability.

PHASE 2 International delivers high-end business software applications via a SaaS model for businesses of all sizes, but especially small-to-medium-sized businesses (SMBs). The company’s applications include the IBM Lotus Suite: Notes, Sametime, Quickr and Connections; Microsoft SharePoint, Exchange (with support for Blackberry devices), Project Server, CRM, and Team Foundation Server, for software developers; and PHASE … Read More »

Oracle took advantage of IBM’s failed efforts to acquire Sun Microsystems and swooped in with a more lucrative bid today which could reap greater rewards for the company’s rapidly expanding cloud computing strategy.

Oracle’s acquisition of Sun could recast the entire computer industry by giving Oracle control of Sun’s Java software and access to its vast developer community, plus Sun’s Solaris-based server technology. These elements could bolster Oracle’s database systems and serve as a powerful web delivery engine for the company’s widening array of business applications and third-party developers.

Oracle had to be sweating bullets during the IBM/Sun negotiations because, “The Sun Solaris operating system is the leading platform for the Oracle database, Oracle’s largest business…”, according to Oracle’s press release today.

Don’t let Larry Ellison’s past pronouncements that the Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) and cloud computing trends are just over-hyped ideas. Folks within Oracle have been working hard to … Read More »