My past fews weeks have been consumed with weekly visits to the Bay Area to speak at SaaScon, moderate tracks at Under the Radar and co-host the AlwaysOn OnDemand conference, as well as numerous on-site client meetings. In between, I also had the privilege of presenting a kickoff keynote presentation at a VIP dinner for the State of the Cloud conference in Boston.

My hectic travel schedule has given me little time to comment on a variety of industry announcements which have occurred during this period. So, here’s my ‘lightening round’ assessment of some of the more significant events worth noting,

Cloud Conference Observations

SaaScon: When was the last time you heard CIOs talk about being heroes in their organizations? Well, the CIOs who spoke at SaaScon repeatedly described how the SaaS solutions which they’re implementing in their organizations are generating an overwhelmingly positive response from their end-users and corporate executives. … Read More »

Salesforce.com announced its intention to acquire Jigsaw today and is once again redefining the role of the software vendor and nature of software applications.

Jigsaw, a Best of SaaS Showplace (BoSS) winner, provides lead generation services via the aggregation of third-party data service feeds combined with a cloud–based, ‘crowd-sourcing’ model.

Jigsaw taps lead gen data from D&B, Hoover’s, LexisNexis and other data sources, and makes it available to sales organizations who in turn clean the data and share their own contact lists in hopes that they will build greater and better quality contacts as a result of participating in Jigsaw’s user community.

Jigsaw’s tight API integration with Salesforce.com makes it relatively easy for users to import third-party contact information into their Salesforce.com’s CRM system. The company’s CEO also told me that its API will be extended to connect to other CRM solutions, including Siebel and Microsoft … Read More »

I’ve been predicting for over a year, that despite the rapid growth of the Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) market many aspiring best-of-breed vendors will not survive an industry shakeout or the short attention spans of their venture funding sources.

The latest case in point is Helpstream which discontinued operations this past month. I first reported on the company in 2008 when it originally launched as Pathworks Software and caught my attention because of the way it promised to leverage the Open Source pricing model and community building orientation.

In essence, Helpstream was one of the first SaaS companies in the helpdesk market to recognize the powerful potential of a social networking capability embedded into an enterprise app.

Since then, saleforce.com has picked up the baton and is very quickly demonstrating the tangible benefits which can be derived from merging a Facebook-like capability into its CRM/SFA solution with … Read More »

There are many myths that are propagated by legacy software vendors to discredit the insurgent Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) and cloud computing movements. But, the SaaS industry has also harbored its own myths for many years as well.

For instance, many SaaS vendors aren’t truly ‘on-demand’. You can’t acquire and utilize their web-based applications instantaneously because they lack the automated provisioning capabilities. And, in many cases they don’t want you to use their online applications ‘by the drink’ because it undercuts the predictable revenue stream which is essential to the SaaS model.

The second and related myth is that most SaaS solutions are not ‘pay-as-you-go’. Instead, you are often asked to pay for a one-year agreement up front before you can utilize the SaaS app.

Despite these limitations, SaaS solutions have flourished because they are still far more flexible and more cost-effective than their legacy … Read More »

In my latest column for E-Commerce Times, I suggest that “once again, Microsoft may be a late entrant in the market with a set of solutions that lag those offered by today’s industry innovators, but it is still in a good position to regain its momentum and become a dominant force in the rapidly evolving cloud computing marketplace.”

Click here to read why.

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 »

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 »

The first week of 2010 was marked with three quick mergers and acquisitions in the Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) market.

They each were in different sectors of the industry and involved differing types of transactions, but still clearly illustrated that there are a variety of companies seeking to capitalize on the escalating demand for SaaS solutions and position themselves as strategic sources of these on-demand services.

The first was an acquisition by EMC of Archer Technologies, a privately-held governance, risk and compliance (GRC) software vendor who offers both on-premise and SaaS solutions. Archer claims to have more than six million licensed users, including 25 of the Fortune 100.

EMC plans to combine Archer’s information risk management capabilities with the information security solutions provided by EMC’s RSA Security Division to enable customers to automate and gain visibility and policy enforcement capabilities across both physical and virtualized IT environments.

The second transaction was the $100 … Read More »

Salesforce.com gave its customers a belated New Year’s gift of unscheduled downtime yesterday, which extended into today in some regions, according to its Trust.Salesforce.com site.

While many of its corporate users might welcome a respite later in the year, most probably came back to work this week with the idea of pounding on their customer databases to generate new revenue opportunities to kickoff the new year. Being unable to access their online customer relationship management (CRM) system probably didn’t make them too happy.

So, will this service disruption derail Salesforce.com, the Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) and broader cloud computing movement? Only if these isolated incidents evolve into an ongoing pattern of declining performance.

Occasional problems happen. Back in 2007, I predicted that the on-demand services market would continue to soar despite more severe service delivery problems at NaviSite that year, because customers were already becoming convinced they could get a better return on investment … Read More »

Since 2009 is coming to a close, I thought it would be a good time to review how I did with my predictions for the year regarding the Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) and cloud computing market.

1. On-Demand Services Move From Why To How

According to a Sandhill.com/McKinsey survey of over 850 enterprise customers at the end of 2008, 74% were already favorably disposed to adopting SaaS platforms. As a result, Gartner estimates the SaaS market will have reached approximately $8 billion at the end of 2009, a 21.9% rise from $6.6 billion in 2008. Looks like folks have moved past “why” SaaS to “how” to get the most out of their SaaS deployments.

2. New Hybrid Models

The idea of hybrid SaaS and cloud computing models has been abhorred by industry purists, but the reality is that nearly every business will rely on a combination of on-premise and on-demand resources. In 2009, the concept of “location independence” became bi-directional. … Read More »