Last week’s announcement by Salesforce.com that it had surpassed one million paying customers marks a milestone for the Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) movement, as well as the company.

THINKstrategies‘ latest industry survey in conjunction with Cutter Consortium has found a third of companies are already utilizing some form of SaaS to help them operate their business and meet their corporate objectives. Our survey found 100% satisfaction among these customers with their SaaS solutions.

This level of satisfaction is unprecedented. It is not only motivating current customers to acquire more SaaS solutions to meet their IT/business needs, but it is encouraging them to recommend SaaS to their peers. This is fueling the growth of SaaS in every segment of the software industry and across every segment of the market.

(Contact me if you’d like to be notified when these survey findings are published.)

While Salesforce.com’s milestone is … Read More »

Just like the frenzy and speculation that surrounds every high-profile couple before they tie the knot in today’s pop culture, the build up over the past few weeks around a pending announcement between Google and Salesforce.com was destined to fall short of many people’s overblown expectations.

Much of the speculation centered on whether Google would acquire Salesforce.com in an attempt to dramatically strengthen the search vendor’s foray into desktop and business applications. In March, I made my bet that Oracle would be the first suitor to try to capitalize on Salesforce.com’s meteoric rise in the on-demand business apps world.

Although I can certainly see the logic in a Google/Salesforce.com marriage, I thought it was premature for the companies to do this kind of deal at this stage. Unless, Oracle initiated a hostile takeover attempt for Salesforce.com, the on-demand vendor wasn’t incented to … Read More »

The Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) movement is rapidly becoming mainstream as organizations of all sizes adopt on-demand services to address various unmet needs or to replace their legacy applications.

The rising acceptance and adoption of SaaS represents a watershed opportunity for new and established independent software vendors (ISVs). But, THINKstrategies has discovered that it is also creating serious challenges for some SaaS companies who are letting escalating competition pressure them into compromising on the fundamental principles of the SaaS delivery model.

Today’s SaaS challenges do not involve the past concerns about the reliability, security or scalability of on-demand solutions. Despite occasional service disruptions, SaaS vendors have proven to be far more reliable than most internal IT departments. They have also been able to avoid security problems which continue to plague enterprises relying on traditional on-premise software. The scalability of on-demand applications has also … Read More »