Although announcements regarding new rounds of funding are relatively commonplace in the tech industry, whenever a Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) company is able to boast about their latest vote of confidence among investors it is worth noting in these tough economic times.

But, Xactly’s announcement this morning that it had garnered a new round of $12 million in funding was especially newsworthy because it also included a “strategic new investment” by Salesforce.com.

Speculating about who Salesforce.com is going to acquire next has become a popular parlor game in the SaaS industry over the past few years. The company has done an admirable job acquiring a variety of companies which have helped to extend its service delivery capabilities, as well as expand its application functionalities.

Some of its acquisitions, like Jigsaw, have been announced publicly. Others, like GroupSwim, have been done quietly.

While there has been speculation that Salesforce.com will … Read More »

One of the more interesting sagas in the Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) market has been SAP’s effort to develop and deliver a competitive offering.

After a series of fits and starts over the past three years, SAP is hoping the latest version of its SaaS-based Business ByDesign (ByD) system which was made generally available today will finally hit the mark.

As I reported in this space in May, I was briefed by SAP (a THINKstrategies client) at its Sapphire user conference about the significant investment it has made retooling the ByD service delivery infrastructure and user interface to make it more appealing, economical and competitive. On the infrastructure side, the 2.5 version of ByD boasts a truer multi-tenant architecture to make it more scalable. The user interface is more intuitive and easier to configure.

Today SAP unveiled three new ‘starter kits’ in Feature Pack 2.5:

Customer Relationship Management (CRM) … Read More »

THINKstrategies  announced today that Right90 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 is an ongoing program which recognizes SaaS companies that are producing tangible business benefits for specific user organizations. These benefits can include increased sales, lower costs, higher customer satisfaction, faster operations and greater profitability.  

Right90’s SaaS-based sales forecasting solution enables companies to quickly and accurately generate more accurate unit and revenue forecasts. And, by integrating with leading customer relationship (CRM) and enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems, Right90’s solution helps companies to achieve higher revenue, greater operating efficiencies and increased margins.

Click here to read more about Right90’s award winning business benefits.

Click here to read more about the BoSS Awards program and to apply for an award.

Based on the success of … Read More »

For the past two weeks, I’ve been debating whether to respond to a commentary in InfoWorld by Neil McAllister which asked, “Is the SaaS Experiment Finally Over?”

But, I couldn’t hold back any longer when one of the many online publications where I’m a contributor, eBizQ, posed the question in a more provocative fashion, “Is SaaS Dead?”

I couldn’t bring myself to respond to McAllister’s column when it was first published because his argument was so ludicrous. He alluded to a variety of past SaaS and cloud vendor service outages to raise concerns about the overall viability of these rapidly expanding markets. And he used a series of Gartnerisms to warn against developer migration to the SaaS model.  

Yet, McAllister ignores the pervasive failures of traditional on-premise software which has inspired organizations of all sizes to explore and increasingly adopt SaaS alternatives to better meet their corporate needs.

The … Read More »

THINKstrategies announced today that Post Vision Technology’s Project Portfolio Office (PPO) has been named the latest winner of the Best of SaaS Showplace (BoSS) Awards program, and the first company based in Africa to be recognized by the program which is aimed at promoting the measurable business benefits being delivered by today’s Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) solutions.

Project Portfolio Office is a web-based application designed, developed and supported in South Africa to assist organizations to manage projects and project portfolios in various industries. It is offered on SaaS platform, and is an enterprise solution capable of bringing together all the elements necessary for typical projects.

Click here to read about the measurable business benefits which Project Portfolio Office delivered to the the Development Bank of South Africa (DBSA), in conjunction with National Treasury, which launched the Siyenza Manje Programme, an initiative aimed at providing hands-on support to distressed municipalities … Read More »

THINKstrategies announced today that EasyVista Inc., member of the Staff&Line Group, 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.

EasyVista.com IT Service Management and IT Asset Management solution covers all ITIL v3 processes in a single, integrated yet modular product. EasyVista.com has been designed for quick and easy deployment and enables users to extensively customize their application through a totally codeless interface. EasyVista.com also reduces recurrent costs making it significantly more affordable than conventional on-premise solutions.

Click here to read about the measurable business benefits which EasyVista produced for its customers which earned it a BoSS Award.

Click here to read more about the BoSS Award program and to apply for an award.

Based on the success of the BoSS Awards program which focuses on … Read More »

THINKstrategies announced today that GoodData 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 is an ongoing program which recognizes SaaS companies that are producing tangible business benefits for specific user organizations. These benefits can include increased sales, lower costs, higher customer satisfaction, faster operations and greater profitability.

GoodData helps companies track the metrics that drive their business by making it easy to collect, report on and share data across marketing, sales, support and operations. The company does this through a Cloud Business Intelligence (BI) Platform that delivers business dashboards in weeks instead of months.

Click here to read more about GoodData’s award winning SaaS BI capabilities which earned the company a BoSS Award.

Click here to read more about the BoSS Award program and to … Read More »

THINKstrategies announced today that Security On-Demand 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 is an ongoing program which recognizes SaaS companies that are producing tangible business benefits for specific user organizations. These benefits can include increased sales, lower costs, higher customer satisfaction, faster operations and greater profitability.

Security On-Demand is a leading provider of comprehensive SaaS-based compliance and security solutions which help organizations maintain compliance with industry regulations, manage risk, and protect themselves from security threats.

Click here to read more about the business benefits which Security On-Demand is delivering to its customers.

Click here to learn more about the BoSS Awards program and to apply for an award.

Based on the success of the BoSS Awards program … Read More »

THINKstrategies announced today that FPX, LLC 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 is an ongoing program which recognizes SaaS companies that are producing tangible business benefits for specific user organizations. These benefits can include increased sales, lower costs, higher customer satisfaction, faster operations and greater profitability.

FPX provides a Configure-Price-Quote application that guides salespeople through the product configuration process. FPX’s configuration engine handles complex pricing issues to enable sales people to quickly produce professional, branded proposals that present the configured product in an understandable format. By eliminating configuration and pricing errors, FPX clients experience lower costs, faster sales cycles and happier customers.

Click here to read about the measurable business benefits which FPX has delivered … Read More »

Yesterday’s announcement by HP that it is cutting 9000 workers and hiring another 6000 as part of a $1 billion multi-year effort to redesign its data center operations and automate its enterprise services is the latest indication of the traumatic impact which today’s cloud computing phenomenon is having on the tech industry.

HP readily admitted in its announcement that its goal is to,

“…Consolidate Enterprise Services’ commercial data centers, management platforms, networks, tools and applications to create a more scalable, modernized and automated IT infrastructure that will better serve its clients’ needs.”

Although the company didn’t specify where its cuts would take place, I suspect that the bulk of the downsizing effort within the Enterprise Services division will involve offloading the legacy data center facilities and staff which came from the EDS acquisition.

My sources within the company have confirmed my original concerns about the acquisition … Read More »