LucidEra’s decision to close its doors this past Friday will spark a new round of debate regarding the viability of the Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) and cloud computing business models.

Some established vendors will use this event as further proof that the SaaS and cloud computing models are not sustainable. Conservative IT and business decision-makers within ‘user’ organizations will use it to justify their decisions to stay away from these ‘on-demand’ solutions.

Ironically, the Wall Street Journal published an article today highlighting the growing efforts of many of the largest software and systems vendors to get onboard the on-demand services bandwagon. The article points out that these vendors have been reluctant to adopt SaaS and cloud computing strategies and offer on-demand alternatives because they undercut the value and profit margins of their legacy products. But, their customers are moving in this direction and they must respond or continue to lose … Read More »

THINKstrategies announced today that Coupa Software 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, such as increased sales, lower costs, higher customer satisfaction, faster operations, and greater profitability.

Coupa is a leading on-demand provider of solutions that control and streamline purchasing for organizations beyond the Fortune 500. Coupa e-Procurement delivers an easy to use, fast to deploy and affordable solution for requisitions, purchase orders, RFQs, inventory and invoicing, with no hardware to buy or software to license.

Click here to read more about the measurable business benefits Coupa has delivered to its corporate customers.

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

THINKstrategies, Inc. and Renovatix Solutions, the leader in providing client branded marketplaces of name brand Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) applications to small and medium business (SMB) customers, today announced a strategic partnership to accelerate the growth of online SaaS marketplaces.

THINKstrategies’ mission in establishing the SaaS Showplace in 2006 was to make organizations aware of the rapidly growing array of SaaS solutions available to address their IT and business needs. By working with Renovatix, we are now making it easier for organizations to acquire and utilize a widening assortment of on-demand solutions as well.

Renovatix Solutions’ SaaS marketplaces are uniquely designed to enable third-party administrators, including enterprises and other service providers, to private-label their SaaS eCommerce sites and give users single sign-on access to all of their applications.

As part of this partnership agreement, THINKstrategies will,

Connect its SaaS Showplace directory to Renovatix’s online SaaS marketplace, … Read More »

Marketo is the latest winner of a Best of SaaS Showplace (BoSS) Award based on the measurable business benefits its Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) delivers to users.

The BoSS Awards program is an initiative by THINKstrategies which brings 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.

Marketo provides solutions for marketing and sales teams, enabling collaboration throughout the revenue cycle from the earliest stages of demand generation and lead management to the pursuit of revenue and customer loyalty.

Click here to read why Marketo was selected to receive a BoSS Award.

Click here to read more about the BoSS Award program or to submit an application for an award.

I had the privilege of attending a local forum at Bentley University hosted by Intuit this past week entitled “Startups and the Cloud: Entrepreneurship in the Age of Cloud Computing”. 

The size of the turnout for this event was another indication of the growing level of interest in Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) and the broader cloud computing phenomenon. It may also be an early indicator of the potential power of Intuit as a key player in this rapidly evolving marketplace.

In a previous blog post, I suggested that two of the most important competitive advantages which leading Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) must display are,

Sustainability in today’s tough economic climate to ensure they are viewed as solid, long-term suppliers of SaaS development and delivery capabilities.
An attractive customer base which can make the PaaS vendor a viable channel to market for developers leveraging its toolkit.

Intuit easily qualifies as a potentially powerful PaaS … Read More »

Last week, I had the privilege of attending and presenting at Internet Capital Group’s (ICG) 2009 Strategic Growth Conference in Philadelphia, and came away impressed with the company’s portfolio of web-oriented businesses and vision for the future.

ICG was one of the pioneers of web-based businesses during the late 1990s, and is one of the few survivors of the Dot.com bust. Like THINKstrategies, ICG believed after the demise of the Dot.com era that there were could still be tremendous opportunities via the Internet once the enabling technologies and business models matured to meet customers’ changing requirements.

Unlike other investment firms which might have a set of ‘theses’ for the types of companies they fund, ICG has attempted to build a portfolio of companies that can leverage their commonalities to create additional … Read More »

SuccessFactors announced yesterday that Siemens AG has agreed to adopt its Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) based, on-demand performance and talent management solutions across its worldwide operations of approximately 420,000 users across 80 countries in 20 different languages.

This is the latest indication of the rapid adoption of SaaS-based solutions by companies of all sizes across nearly every industry and geography.

Specifically, this announcement is significant because,

It clearly illustrates that SaaS is well-suited for global enterprises, and further dispels the myth that it is just for small- and mid-size businesses (SMBs) that can’t afford the luxury of traditional, on-premise enterprise applications.
It also shows that European companies are becoming more comfortable adopting SaaS solutions despite past concerns about off-site and/or out-of-country hosting of corporate data.
It demonstrates the declining power of incumbent vendors within customer accounts, as SuccessFactors outmaneuvered SAP which already had its software installed at Siemens and shares … Read More »

Friday’s Massachusetts Technology Leadership Council’s (MassTLC) UnConference on “The Future of Software and the Internet” was a tremendous success because it brought together over 250 area executives and entrepreneurs for a free-wheeling set of discussions about a wide array of industry trends and opportunities.

Some of the sessions were open debates about the meaning of current trends, such as cloud computing and Software-as-a-Service (SaaS). Others were open-ended explorations about how companies and individuals can capitalize on these trends to create new business opportunities, such as “cloud-solving”. Still other sessions turned out to be useful tutorials about the realities of the marketplace, such as one I attended about the inefficiencies in today’s capital markets that are discouraging tech IPOs and reshaping the way start-ups evolve.

Dealing with the unstructured nature of an unconference can be unsettling for folks like me initially. And some sessions … Read More »

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

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.

Concerro is a provider of web-based workforce management software and services which reduces labor costs, protects revenue, and improves staff and patient satisfaction in hospitals across the U.S.

Click here to read about the business benefits Concerro’s clients have gained by utilizing its SaaS solutions.

Click here to learn more about the BoSS Award program and how companies can apply for an award.

Phil Wainewright provided a very interesting analysis of Intalio’s new ‘hybrid’ Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) and cloud computing offering which echos the approach I suggested last Fall.

My original blog was inspired by the belief that technology is advancing at a fast enough rate to make it possible to offer a fully contained SaaS ‘appliance’ deployable behind the firewall to alleviate customer concerns regarding data security, service availability and/or performance.

While some of my friends at Salesforce.com said my idea was crazy, my blog post prompted many SaaS and cloud computing vendors to comment that they were already offering flexible deployment options to satisfy various customer preferences.

Of course, the key to this go-to-market strategy is the ability to lock-down the code base so that the SaaS vendor is only supporting one version of the its solution, no matter where it is is deployed.

By putting their … Read More »