Last week’s OpSource SaaS Summit was a milestone event for the on-demand services market on a number of levels.

The first SaaS Summit in Silverado in 2006 was a gathering of industry pioneers to discuss the potential of the on-demand movement. Last year’s Summit in Monterey was an opportunity to celebrate the growing success of the SaaS movement. This year’s Summit offered a chance to take stock of what it will take to scale SaaS to meet the needs of the mainstream market. The theme was platforms and web services, but the event also raised other issues.

With over 600 registered attendees, this year’s SaaS Summit was the largest vendor-oriented conference focused entirely on the rapidly growing Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) market to date. While Salesforce.com’s Dreamforce user conference is still the biggest SaaS event of all, OpSource’s SaaS Summit has represented the benchmark … Read More »

As the Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) market matures, it is becoming obvious to everyone involved in this market that selling SaaS solutions can be a complicated.

First, not every SaaS solution can be sold in a simple point-and-click fashion. Many enterprise applications need to be specifically configured to meet the needs of specific customers. A point-and-click procurement system may still be useful in these situations, but an additional configurator or on-line sales support capability may be necessary.

(Many SaaS vendors are discovering that building a cost-effective billing and procurement engine is also more complicated than they expected.)

Second, selling to many mid- and large-scale enterprises still requires face-to-face interaction. This is why Salesforce.com is aggressively recruiting experienced enterprise software salespeople, many of whom I had the privilege of presenting to in Las Vegas two weeks ago at their 2008 kickoff meeting.

Yet, selling a subscription service … Read More »

Since Michael Dell returned to the helm of his company, he has been dramatically reshaping its channel and services strategies. He is also putting the IT industry on notice that the way hardware companies define and deliver services is changing.

The old guard of the IT industry recognized in the 1980s and 1990s that tech support, professional services and outsourcing could generate lucrative revenues and create greater lock-in opportunities in an increasingly commoditized hardware business. Lou Gerstner saved IBM by turning it into a services company.

Dell bucked this trend by investing in sophisticated supply-chain, fulfillment and customer service processes which enabled it to succeed as a low-cost, high-margin manufacturer.

HP stole a page from Dell’s book and usurped its price advantage. Without a strong services story to serve as a safety-net, Dell was vulnerable to customer defections. It is now seeking to … Read More »

Maybe a measure of the Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) movement’s success is the growing attention billing systems are now getting from a variety of sources.

Last week, Jamcracker unveiled its new WebStores which will provide front- and back-end service delivery infrastructure, billing and settlement, customer administration and support services for traditional channel companies who want to add on-demand applications to their existing software, hardware and service portfolios.

Today, OpSource announced that it has acquired privately-held and Dublin-based LeCayla Technologies, a provider of billing and customer on-boarding software for SaaS and Web-based applications, to strengthen OpSource’s Web application delivery platform. (Click here to read THINKstrategies’ 2006 profile of LeCayla, or listen to my 2007 podcast with LeCayla’s CEO, Conor Halpin.)

These are just the latest moves by a widening array of players who are offering storefront solutions to make it easier for SaaS vendors to sell … Read More »

Google made two announcements this week which received limited attention because they had been anticipated for some time. Nonetheless, these two new offerings will still have an impact on the Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) and managed services markets.

Google’s first announcement unveiled a series of security “products” based on the email message filtering, encryption and archiving capabilities Google acquired when it purchased Postini. Although Google refers to these offerings as products, they are being sold on a subscription service direct to customers or via channel partners who can package these capabilities into managed services.

Google’s objective when it acquired Postini was to fortify its messaging and archival capabilities so it could appeal to a broader cross-section of business customers, especially large-scale, publicly traded enterprises who are facing stricter compliance requirements. Google’s new Message Filtering, Security and Discovery offerings provide a solid, yet simple and … Read More »

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 … Read More »

Microsoft’s proposed acquisition of Yahoo has gained plenty of attention because of its blockbuster pricetag and obvious attempt to blunt Google’s success in the online search advertising business.

However, I think the acquisition also has significant implications for the future of on-demand services. Yahoo’s popular portal will certainly be a great new channel to market for Microsoft’s on-demand games and Zune entertainment initiatives.

I’ve also been saying for the past two years that Yahoo and other major online outlets will become the new channels to market for Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) solutions and managed services. This is because many corporate customers are gaining confidence in SaaS and managed services as a viable alternative to traditional on-premise products result of their overall comfort with consumer-oriented on-demand services like Amazon, eBay, YouTube and iTunes. This consumer to corporate buyer crossover makes Yahoo an appealling outlet for … Read More »

Salesforce.com rolled out its Force.com Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) enablement platform last week after plenty of fanfare at its Dreamforce conference in September. The launch of the platform has sparked a new round of debates regarding the merits of Salesforce.com’s application development toolkit and its service delivery capabilities.

I’ve said many times in this blog and elsewhere, there is no more important or innovative player in the SaaS market than Salesforce.com. Every SaaS user and SaaS provider owes a debt of gratitude to Marc Benioff and Salesforce.com for pioneering the on-demand software services market and setting the standard for enterprise-class SaaS solutions.

While some elements in Salesforce.com’s strategies and solutions can be criticized as self-serving or ineffective, the company’s overall impact on the growth of the SaaS market cannot be denied.

Salesforce.com has set the bar for designing simple yet effective web-based business applications. It … Read More »

Anyone who follows this blog or the broader on-demand services market is well-aware of the disruptive impact Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) is having on the software industry. Now, software and systems vendors are offering SaaS solutions that could have an equally profound affect on the way organizations acquire and manage technology, as well as transform the way vendors and channel companies sell and support technology.

While the managed services has grown steadily, many channel companies have experienced limited success migrating to a managed services model. As I’ve stated in previous blog entries and my other writings, part of the problem is that executives within established channel companies don’t fully understand what it takes to transform their businesses. But, another barrier to success has been the lack of cost-effective tools.

Until recently, many channel companies were unable to successfully transition to a managed services model … Read More »

It is always gratifying to have the major research firms affirm my perspectives and THINKstrategies’ predictions.

Recently, Gartner predicted that the global outsourcing market will grow 8.1 percent in 2008, and that this growth would not be in the form of traditional IT and business process outsourcing (BPO) agreements, but fueled instead by growing the acceptance of Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) and other utility computing services offerings by companies of all sizes.

Let’s have some fun and do a side-by-side comparison:

According to Gartner, “publicly reported IT outsourcing (ITO) and business process outsourcing (BPO) contract values decreased overall by 50 percent in 2007.”In January 2002, I wrote in a NetworkWorld commentary that the traditional outsourcing model was dying. Even at that time, the size and duration of these deals was shrinking because their rate of success was abysmal.

As I’ve been stating for many years, companies … Read More »