Last week’s travels took me from Boston to Washington, DC, for NetworkWorld’s latest stop of the IT Roadmap and then on to San Jose, CA , for the SIIA’s OnDemand conference.

In DC, I had the privilege of presenting in the Convention Center’s main ballroom THINKstrategies’ perspectives regarding cloud computing, Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) and managed services.

A year ago, less than 50 people attended my breakout session on this topic as these new services were just beginning to hit the radar-screens of government agencies as they anticipated the arrival of the newly elected Obama administration.

Last week, the number of attendees in my session was over twice the previous year’s total, the latest milestone in a steady rise which I’ve seen throughout 2009 of both public sector and commercial interest in on-demand alternatives to on-premise systems and software.

In the case of these government-oriented attendees, … Read More »

HP unveiled a new Cloud Assure program this week, in conjunction with SaaScon, which responds to the growing concerns among enterprise decision-makers about the availability, security and performance of today’s rapidly evolving cloud computing services.

I think HP’s announcement is timely because enterprise IT/business decision-makers are interested in taking advantage of the burgeoning cloud computing opportunities, but apprehensive re: the reliability, accessibility and security (RAS) of these services. As a result, they’re looking for cloud computing services which give them a greater level of manageability, visibility and control.

HP is betting that it can capitalize on its the web monitoring services and skills it acquired in its Mercury Interactive deal, and its corporate brand equity as a network/system management (NSM) vendor to establish a strong position in the cloud computing management market.

HP’s biggest obstacle to success is that it isn’t considered a leading cloud computing … Read More »

Among my predictions for 2009, was that the new Obama administration would push legislation and take other initiatives to promote Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) and cloud computing as part of its overhaul of the government and economic stimulus efforts.

Sure enough, Obama’s new CIO–Vivek Kundra–made it clear yesterday that he is a big proponent of SaaS and cloud computing. Here’s what he said to the Wall Street Journal,

“I’m a big believer in disruptive technology. If I went to the coffee shop, I would have more computing power than the police department. Consumers had better technology than the government did. I’m all about the cloud computing notion. I look at my lifestyle, and I want access to information wherever I am. I am killing projects that don’t investigate software as a service first.”

Support for SaaS and cloud computing isn’t only coming from the top … Read More »

Savvis, Inc. has been named the first managed services 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 by THINKstrategies to bring attention to SaaS and cloud computing companies which are producing tangible business benefits for specific user organizations, including increased sales, lower costs, higher customer satisfaction, faster operations, and greater profitability.

Savvis is an outsourcing provider of managed computing and network infrastructure for IT applications. A case example of the business benefits of Savvis’ services is Wall Street Systems, a provider of treasury, trading and settlement software, which decided in 2006 to make a strategic shift in direction and move from a standard licensing model to the new SaaS delivery model.

Click here to learn more … Read More »

I recently published a column in E-Commerce Times discussing the growing interest and adoption of Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) tools among IT professionals seeking to better manage their increasingly complex IT environments.

Two announcements during the past week illustrate the growing convergence of the SaaS and managed services industries as well, a trend which I’ve been talking about for the past two years.

The first of these announcements came from ManageEngine which unveiled a free beta of its new SaaS-based network, systems and security management software capabilities.

ManageEngine is a quiet giant in the IT management industry with over 37,000 companies utilizing its traditional software solutions. It is also a subsidiary of India-based, AdventNet, Inc., which also owns Zoho, the increasingly popular SaaS office productivity solution provider.

While ManageEngine’s new OpManager On-Demand offerings do not currently include the Zoho tools, they capitalize on the same service delivery infrastructure and SaaS … Read More »

Happy New Year!

Let me be the first to offer predictions for the on-demand services market on this first day of 2009. These predictions are based on THINKstrategies’ latest survey research and ongoing consulting work with IT/business decision-makers, IT solution providers and various technology investors.

I recognize that plenty of predictions have been made already, but hope mine offer a different perspective on the future direction of the on-demand services market.

Contact me if you’d like to discuss or debate any of these predictions.

On-Demand Services Move From Why … Read More »