THINKstrategies announced today that Intuit Quickbase has been named the latest winner of the Best of SaaS Showplace (BoSS) Awards program.

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. These benefits include increased sales, lower costs, higher customer satisfaction, faster operations, and greater profitability.

Intuit QuickBase allows users to create unique business applications tailored to meet their specific process and industry needs – without technical expertise or coding. Business users can easily build new on-demand business applications from scratch or select from more than 200 available templates to customize.

Click here to read more about case study examples that  illustrate the measurable benefits which customers have gained from Intuit QuickBase.

Click here to read more about the BoSS Awards program or to … Read More »

Making the transition to a Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) model isn’t easy for incumbent software vendors (ISVs).

Rearchitecting their applications may be the easiest task in the transformation process. Redesigning their go-to-market strategies and ongoing operations; restructuring their revenue recognition models; and reorienting their staff are the more difficult challenges.

Greater service delivery costs combined with lower per unit prices make it is easy to see why most ISVs have tried to resist the SaaS movement and denied its long-term viability.

Yet, a severe slowdown in traditional, packaged, ‘legacy’ application sales has made it imperative for ISVs of all sizes across every segment of the software industry to finally accept SaaS as a reality they can no longer ignore and must finally embrace.

Even Microsoft, Oracle or SAP are promising ‘cloud’ solutions and cranking up their PR machines to promote their promises. But, their SaaS offerings are still primarily hosted versions … Read More »

THINKstrategies announced today that Silverpop’s Engage B2B 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 as the latest initiative by THINKstrategies to bring attention to SaaS and cloud computing companies which are producing tangible business benefits for specific user organizations. These benefits include increased sales, lower costs, higher customer satisfaction, faster operations, and greater profitability.

Silverpop’s Engage B2B marketing automation platform seamlessly scores sales leads, nurtures them through the pipeline and measures campaign return-on-investment. The Engage B2B solution helps companies maximize their marketing efforts, engage their prospects with targeted communications, improve their efficiency, increase revenue and accelerate the lead-to-sale timeline.

Click here to read about Silverpop Engage B2B’s award winning capabilities.

Click … Read More »

Yesterday’s announcement that NetSuite is acquiring QuickArrow and merging it with OpenAir is the most recent example of a consolidation process in the Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) industry which I predicted would accelerate at the beginning of the year.

This particular transaction is very similar to Xactly’s acquisition of Centive in January. Rather than combining functional capabilities to create a more robust solution, the companies are combining forces to create greater scale.

In both cases, the transactions eliminate head-to-head competitors who looked too much alike to be able to clearly differentiate themselves from one another. Their similarities made it harder to compete for customers and VC funding, especially in today’s tough economy.

Merging, with the help of NetSuite’s deeper pockets, allows the two companies to focus on new customer acquisition, channel relationships and geographic expansion.

This acquisition is the latest indication that the SaaS market is entering a new stage in which the winners will be … Read More »

THINKstrategies announced today that e-Builder 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 as the latest initiative by THINKstrategies to bring attention to SaaS and cloud computing companies which are producing tangible business benefits for specific user organizations. These benefits include increased sales, lower costs, higher customer satisfaction, faster operations, and greater profitability.

e-Builder provides a web-based, fully integrated capital program and project management software suite for organizations managing facility planning, construction, and operations. North America’s leading facility owners use e-Builder to improve project execution, resulting in increased productivity and quality, reduced cost, and faster project delivery. The system is modular in nature and can be deployed in phases. The primary modules include: Cost, Schedule, Business Process, Document Management, Reports, … Read More »

Last week, Gartner attempted to derail the Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) movement by issuing a press release regarding its latest customer survey which found that SaaS users are “underwhelmed by their current experience of it and sense that SaaS is not quite the panacea it often promised to be.”

For some reason, it took Gartner more than six months to interpret the results of its survey of users and prospects of SaaS solutions in 333 enterprises in the U.S. and the U.K. which was conducted in December 2008. Maybe because the data didn’t say what they were hoping and it took more time to twist the results into a story that fit their reality and could generate a few headlines.

Gartner’s press release starts by stating that “SaaS is more mainstream and less controversial than ever before”, an important admission from a research firm which a few … Read More »

Much has been written regarding Google’s latest challenge to Microsoft–its announcement last week that it plans to unveil a new operating system (OS) in the second half of 2010.

There is no question that Google’s ambitious plans can have a significant impact on the computing world. And, because computing has become an integral part of everyone’s day-to-day world, the Google-Microsoft war deserves plenty of attention, even in the mainstream media and among Main Street businesses.

However, it shouldn’t come as any surprise that Google would move in this direction. It has been nibbling away at the edges of Microsoft’s fortress for a number of years.

Google Desktop does a better job finding files within Micrsoft Office than Microsoft’s own software. Gmail is easier to use than Outlook. And, Google Apps have become a viable alternative to Microsoft Office within a growing number of businesses, non-profit agencies and governmental … Read More »

No, I haven’t gone over to the darkside and abandoned the Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) movement.

But, I just gave a keynote presentation regarding the state of the SaaS and cloud computing market at SoftLetter’s latest SaaS University in Chicago, where the challenges of developing and delivering successful SaaS solutions were once again brought home in the discussions among the software executives and SaaS professionals attending the event.

Despite it being scheduled on the last day of the quarter and first week of many people’s summer vacation, the event succeeded in attracting about 70 CXOs from a cross-section of established independent software vendors (ISVs) and SaaS start-ups seeking insights about how to succeed in this rapidly growing industry.

Like past SaaS University sessions, the attendees were treated to a variety of tutorials from industry practitioners with a minimum … Read More »

THINKstrategies announced today that Manticore Technology 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 as the latest initiative by THINKstrategies to bring attention to SaaS and cloud computing companies which are producing tangible business benefits for specific user organizations. These benefits include increased sales, lower costs, higher customer satisfaction, faster operations, and greater profitability.

Manticore Technology is an on-demand, marketing automation solution  provider that enables marketers to effortlessly move sales prospects through the pipeline through demand generation, lead management, lead scoring, and lead nurturing, while feeding their sales team invaluable insight about the interests of each lead. As a result, Manticore Technology customers increase revenues, lower costs, and gain a … Read More »

This was the title of one of my first commentaries for ITworld’s old Utility Computing portal back on January 14, 2004. I had to laugh when I saw a blog post today with the same title on GigaOm’s site regarding a panel session about Private Clouds during this week’s Structure ’09 conference.

My original commentary focused on the hesitancy among the major technology vendors to adopt a services-driven strategy that would capitalize on the rapidly evolving Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) and managed services capabilities which were emerging in 2004.

Based on the summary in the GigaOm blog post, it appears that the Private Cloud panel focused on all the reasons why enterprise IT shops have been slow to fulfill their roles as internal service providers.

Of course, the irony is that many of the vendors represented on the panel have encouraged their IT customers to be more focused on managing technology than … Read More »