This week’s NetworkWorld includes an article about SpiceWorks’ new, free, desktop management solution. The on-demand service enables IT professionals to manage up to 250 devices. The company claims the free solution includes discover, inventory, monitoring, tracking, reporting and remote hardware and software problem resolution capabilities.

Giving away free IT/network management solutions isn’t a new idea. This is the same thing a company called VitalSigns did in the application performance management space a decade ago to penetrate the market before the company I was a part of, International Network Services (INS), acquired it to enhance our network performance management service called EnterprisePRO.

More recently, Klir Technologies has been using this same strategy to penetrate the market with its on-demand network performance management solution.

The broader trend is that IT professionals are becoming increasingly receptive to Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) and managed service ‘out-tasking’ alternatives to traditional … Read More »

With last week’s announcement of a private equity buyout of major computer hardware and software distributor, CDW, speculation is escalating about where this new influx of investors will strike next within the information technology (IT) industry.

The CDW deal comes two weeks after computer and database services provider Acxiom Corp. agreed to be bought by Silver Lake Partners and ValueAct Capital Partners LP for about $2.24 billion. Now, some see Dell as a likely buyout candidate, others are speculating about whether computer chip software design vendor Cadence will ‘go private’.

I think a series of private equity deals will be aimed at a wide array of publicly-traded, incumbent software vendors (ISVs) in the coming months. These ISVs will boast a significant installed base of customers, but will also be facing significant challenges keeping pace with the Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) movement. I also believe … Read More »

The findings of a 2006 survey recently released by Gartner has brought renewed attention to the fundamental shortcomings of today’s major network/system management (NSM) platforms from companies such as IBM, HP, CA and BMC.

The survey found that 40% gave their NSM vendors a mediocre “C” and nearly 30% of the respondents gave their vendors a “D” because of their frustrations with the costs and hassles involved in deploying and administering the vendors’ platforms.

These frustrations aren’t news. When I was the director of strategic marketing at International Network Services (INS), we were the first company to rollout a network performance management software service on a subscription pricing basis in response to these same frustrations. Our EnterprisePRO solution was unveiled in 1996, prior to the advent of the managed service provider (MSP) and application service provider (ASP) ideas.

Unfortunately, although there were plenty … Read More »

In my most recent THINKstrategies Update newsletter, I stated that the winners in the increasingly competitive Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) and Managed Services markets will be the companies who own the trust of the customer. In that newsletter, I highlighted some of THINKstrategies’ latest publications which spotlight innovative approaches to building trust in both markets.

Yesterday, Intacct Corporation asserted itself as a leader in the trust-building business by unveiling a new “Buy with Confidence” program aimed at assuring the success of customers using its on-demand financial management solution.

Under Intacct’s new program, the company is committing to deliver the following levels of service to its customer:

1. Service Availability: Intacct is guaranteeing 99.8% service availability. If it fails to achieve its goal, it will provide a AvailabilityPlus subscription credit of 10% of the customer’s subscription fee for each percentage point below the service level goal, … Read More »

While Salesforce.com and its Founder/CEO/Chairman, Mark Benioff, get most of the attention and credit for setting the standard for the Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) movement, OpSource and its Founder/CEO, Treb Ryan, have done more than their share to evangelize the business benefits of SaaS and educate the software industry about the steps to success in this market.

Treb saw the opportunity to differentiate OpSource from the floundering hosting business by focusing on a nascent SaaS marketplace early. The company asserted itself as the “SaaS Experts” by establishing a professional services arm which helped aspiring on-demand companies understand the business of SaaS. It also initiated an aggressive marketing campaign in 2005-2006 which included an incubation program, countless webinars and the SaaS industry’s first conference, the SaaS Summit.

The company used the occasion of its second annual SaaS Summit in Monterey, CA, this week to unveil … Read More »

Cisco was very clear about the primary reasons it decided to acquire WebEx this week,

Add a new layer of web-based applications to its infrastructure-oriented product portfolio
Add a new subscription service business to its product-dependent revenue model
Gain access to 2.2 million registered end-users as well as additional corporate customers

The announcement immediately placed Cisco in the middle of the Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) movement, expanded the scope of the SaaS movement into the communications and messaging sector, and created an intriguing new area of competition between Cisco and Microsoft.

The announcement also gave SaaS greater credibility as a viable alternative to traditional shrink-wrapped products and an increasingly attractive business model for future success.

However, there is another dimension of the acquisition which hasn’t been mentioned in the many trade publication and industry analyst commentaries.

One of WebEx’s strongest solution areas is remote support services. Its … Read More »

Among the reasons why many organizations are still hesitant to adopt Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) is the concern that it will be difficult to integrate their existing data sources into their new, on-demand software services.

While this may be a real challenge for some large enterprises that must contend with a plethora of custom applications, it is becoming less of a issue for other companies with relatively common applications and database structures, as a result of rapidly evolving SaaS solutions.

The latest innovation in the integration arena was unveiled by Informatica last week when the company announced its new On Demand Data Replicator, the first multi-tenant, cross-enterprise data integration on-demand service.

The On Demand Data Replicator enables organizations to quickly and easily replicate SaaS-related data to their on-premise transactional and master databases. The service is initially aimed at organizations relying on Salesforce.com and third-parties tied … Read More »

While much of the information technology (IT) industry and many CIOs, concerned about their traditional legacy business intelligence (BI) applications, were focused on the market implications of Oracle’s acquisition of Hyperion Software, new entries into the market may represent a more important milestone in the evolution of this segment of the software industry.

On March 6, 2007, LucidERA unveiled its new Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) business intelligence solution. The company is founded by one of the truly good guys of the industry, Ken Rudin, who also has a unique perspective on the opportunities and challenges represented by the SaaS model.

Ken started his career at Oracle. He then co-founded and was CEO of Emergent Corporation, a consulting firm focused on data warehousing projects for Fortune 500 companies which was sold to Keane, Inc. in 1999. At that point, Ken joined a new company, called … Read More »

While Salesforce.com was unveiling the first iteration of its new generation of on-demand vertical market software services aimed at the financial services sector this past week, Google was flexing its muscles as a viable Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) vendor with its first round of fee-based, packaged online desktop solutions aimed at enterprise customers.

Google’s new Google Apps includes integrated word processing and spreadsheet applications, as well as BlackBerry support for Gmail for $50/user, a fraction of the price of Microsoft’s Office suite. In order to overcome corporate apprehension about the quality of its new services, Google is offering guaranteed uptime, IT management tools, technical support, and increased e-mail storage. Yet, to show how far Google must go to fulfill its promise as a viable provider of on-demand enterprise apps, Google Gmail users suffered from a series of service failures during the first week … Read More »

In January, THINKstrategies joined the growing legion of multimedia Internet producers with our Spotlight on Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) podcast series aimed at educating and evangelizing about the business benefits of today’s new SaaS solutions.

We are now expanding the scope of our podcasts to discuss encompass Managed Services as well. As with our initial podcasts, we will continue to examine ways in which customers and solution providers are leveraging managed services to achieve their business objectives.

Our latest podcast is a discussion of managed service trends, as well as SaaS developments, with Chris Hoffmann and Scott Donohue, two of principals of Triple-Tree, LCC, a leading investment bank which helps emerging and established companies achieve their corporate objectives in the on-demand services industry.

Click here to listen to THINKstrategies’ latest podcast.

I hope you find the podcast series valuable. Please sign up for our new RSS … Read More »