The resignation of Leo Apotheker as CEO of SAP has sparked significant speculation re: the issues which drove this decision and where SAP will go from here.

The significance of this event was clearly underlined by the role SAP’s Co-Founder and Chairman of the Supervisory Board, Hasso Plattner, played as the primary company spokesperson during a corporate conference call this morning.

During the call, Plattner made an emotional defense of the company’s strategies and tactics in response to rising criticism in the face of SAP’s financial struggles. Plattner used the occasion to dispute claims that SAP isn’t moving fast enough to respond to changes in the market by proclaiming that SAP is well on its way to becoming a “multiple product company”. He gave Apotheker credit for “turning around” BusinessByDesign and said the rollout of the v2.5 of the on-demand solution is “close”.

The reality is that BusinessByDesign has only … Read More »

THINKstrategies announced today that InteQ InfraDesk has been named the latest 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 as an initiative aimed at bringing greater attention to SaaS and cloud computing companies that are producing tangible business benefits for specific user organizations. These benefits include increased sales, lower costs, higher customer satisfaction, faster operations and greater profitability.

InteQ is a leader in On Demand IT Service Management. InteQ’s ITIL SaaS Service Desk application, InfraDesk, is a web-based solution built on InteQ’s process automation expertise and experience. Through its Software as a Service (SaaS) delivery model, InfraDesk enables large organizations to eliminate costly maintenance upgrades and lengthy implementation cycles commonly associated with traditional … Read More »

SuccessFactors, Inc. announced today that it is acquiring Inform Business Impact, an Australia-based provider of workforce analytics and planning solutions.

Here are my quick impressions about the business implications of this announcement:

This move confirms my prior predictions that the pace of acquisitions within the Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) would accelerate and that major U.S.-based SaaS vendors would put greater emphasis on growing internationally in 2010.
The acquisition of an Australia-based SaaS vendor, on the heals of yesterday’s revelation that Salesforce.com recently acquired a Scotland-based SaaS vendor, illustrates that the on-demand services movement is taking root globally. In fact, approximately 30% of the over 1200 companies listed on THINKstrategies’ SaaS Showplace are headquartered outside the U.S.
This is SuccessFactors’s first acquisition, and it is clear that it plans to do many more because the company also announced today the hiring of Cisco Systems veteran Judy Blegen as its new VP of M&A … Read More »

One of the knocks against Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) and the broader cloud computing movement is that these web-based, on-demand services can’t be customized to cater to the complex requirements of specific enterprises.

While SaaS solutions have increasingly included a growing array of user configuration capabilities to respond to the individual needs of various organizations, Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) solutions have emerged over the past couple of years to permit end-users and third-party developers to build their own apps to meet their unique requirements.

The latest indication of the escalating power of these PaaS tools is today’s announcement unveiling Salesforce.com’s new Force.com Visual Process Manager. This new feature will allow users to design and build business process-oriented applications quickly so they can automate them across corporate departments.

Although the new Force.com Visual Process Manager won’t be generally available until later this year, it is the latest sign that cloud computing alternatives … Read More »

THINKstrategies announced the launch today of a new awards program aimed at showing how cloud computing services are helping organizations of all sizes across every industry respond to today’s unprecedented business challenges.

THINKstrategies’ new Cloud Computing Business Value (CCBV) Awards are aimed at highlighting the measurable business benefits which Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) and Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) providers are delivering to enterprises and other end-users.

The CCBV awards is an ongoing program which will identify and promote IaaS and PaaS providers which can demonstrate that their web-based, on-demand solutions have produced tangible business benefits for specific organizations, such as lower costs, reduced deployment times, increased sales, higher customer satisfaction, etc.

The new award program builds on the success of THINKstrategies’ Best … Read More »

THINKstrategies announced today that ActiveConversion has been named the latest 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 as an initiative aimed at bringing greater attention to SaaS and cloud computing companies that are producing tangible business benefits for specific user organizations. These benefits include increased sales, lower costs, higher customer satisfaction, faster operations and greater profitability.

ActiveConversion is a leading provider of marketing measurement, lead management and demand generation systems for companies with fewer than 1000 employees. Its solutions make it easy for companies to see which marketing initiatives are paying off, and to produce sales-ready leads. ActiveConversion delivers its solutions as a hosted solution through a low monthly subscription which has … Read More »

This week’s announcement that Microsoft and Intuit are linking their respective Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) capabilities has attracted lots of attention and generated plenty of speculation. It is also the latest escalation of the PaaS wars I predicted would take center-stage this year.

Although Salesforce.com’s Force.com PaaS has gained the lion’s share of industry attention because of the company’s unparalleled marketing machine, I’ve felt that Intuit’s Partner Platform (IPP) represented a dark-horse in the PaaS race because of the vast installed base of small- and mid-sized businesses (SMBs) using Intuit’s QuickBooks and QuickBase, along with its powerful channel relationships.

I’ve also believed that Microsoft would make considerable progress in penetrating the cloud computing market this year, not because of the technical capabilities of its Azure PaaS, but because of its historical prowess in building a vast partner network of ISVs and developers.

With those thoughts in mind, here’s … Read More »

Back to back announcements this week have brought renewed attention to the IT service management (ITSM) market as a key battleground for Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) competition.

On January 19, BMC announced its latest Remedy ITSM Suite On Demand solution, a SaaS-based offering which promises to integrate with BMC’s Atrium Configuration Management Database (CMDB) and Business Service Management (BSM) platform.

That same day, Service-now.com announced that PepsiAmericas had selected its SaaS-based ITSM solution. In Service-now.com’s announcement, PepsiAmericas’ IT Customer Service Manager, Amy Irwin said, “Our old tool couldn’t meet our needs so we went shopping for a tool that could. We quickly determined SaaS would best fit our tool requirements.”

IT acceptance of SaaS-based solutions isn’t new. THINKstrategies first identified this trend in our 2007 customer survey in conjunction with Cutter Consortium.

However, SaaS vendor focus on this segment of the market has intensified over the past two … Read More »

Many people confuse Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) with ad-supported online services.

They are independent ideas, but can be combined to quickly entice potential customers to try a web-based service without making a financial commitment.

In most cases, the vendor’s goal is to convert as many of these free trial users into paying customers as quickly as possible. Given the challenges associated with this conversion process in nearly every segment of the cyberworld, it isn’t surprising that most SaaS industry observers question the viability of using this tactic in the B2B market, especially among SaaS solutions geared toward IT managers.

Spiceworks is proving the cynics wrong.

The company offers web-based network monitoring tools for corporate IT and managed service providers (MSPs). Users can sign up for free if they don’t mind ads intermixed with their online tools. They can subscribe to a more full-featured, ad-free service if they prefer. Many of … Read More »

THINKstrategies announced today that Thrive Technologies has been named the first 2010 winner of the Best of SaaS Showplace (BoSS) Awards program, in recognition of the measurable business benefits which Thrive’s Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) solutions have delivered to its customers.

The BoSS Awards program was initiated in 2009 by THINKstrategies to bring greater attention to SaaS and cloud computing companies that are producing tangible business benefits for specific user organizations. These benefits include increased sales, lower costs, higher customer satisfaction, faster operations and greater profitability.

Thrive Technologies develops and markets web-based demand forecasting and inventory replenishment software that increases profits for distribution intensive companies in high service supply networks by maximizing their inventory performance.  Thrive’s on–demand SaaS system removes the burden on their customers’ IT resources for server procurement, installation, upgrades, and maintenance.  By providing their system as a SaaS solution, Thrive Technologies can help their customers gain control … Read More »