A little over a year ago, I contributed a commentary to eWeek’s Channel Insider, entitled “On-Demand a Boon for the Channel”, that stated the Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) movement doesn’t have to be the death-kneel for channel organizations.

At that time, many resellers and integrators feared that SaaS would ‘dis-intermediate’ them because of its direct sales and simpler deployment characteristics. There is no question that these attributes will certainly disrupt the traditional business models of many resellers and integrators who capitalized on the complexities of the legacy applications in the past. However, there is still plenty of complexity in today’s enterprise-oriented SaaS solutions to give innovative resellers and integrators a new round of business opportunities to pursue.

Just as in the past, customization and integration remain challenges in the new world of enterprise SaaS solutions. A year ago, I discussed in the eWeek article … Read More »

Salesforce.com yesterday unveiled its first concerted effort to focus the power of its AppExchange partner network and Apex programming platform at a specific vertical market opportunity. Salesforce.com’s new initiative targets the financial services sector, in general, and the wealth management segment, in particular.

The new on-demand services come at a time when THINKstrategies’ research indicates that companies of all sizes are not only becoming more receptive to Software-as-a-Service (SaaS), but are increasingly looking for industry-specific solutions.

The new wealth management offering combines Salesforce.com’s core customer relationship management (CRM) and salesforce automation (SFA) software solutions with a set of third-party applications and business services focused on financial advisors who want to better serve their customers. It includes a set of standard features and functions upon which business partners and corporate customers can add their own components and capabilities.

The new wealth management service leverages … Read More »