The Buzz - December 2007

Understanding the SaaS Ecosystem by Dana Gardner & Colleen Smith

The timing is now right for small businesses and independent software vendors to reach each other through SaaS (Software as a Service), with the Web as a platform, and with compelling economics.

We're also seeing more SOA (Services Oriented Architecture) support vendors focus their sales on SaaS providers and hosts, with the understanding that SOA may well emerge in the SaaS universe first, and then extend to enterprises more generally.

There is an entire universe of suppliers and vendors that support the delivery of applications as on-demand services. Indeed, the SaaS model is attracting more than end users who acquire their information technology via user-per-month service subscriptions. Also attracted to the SaaS market are those vendors creating the means to produce and deliver such services well and efficiently.

SaaS has enabled vendors to target some very niche verticals and go down into new markets and address small and medium businesses. There are also a lot of things they need to think about in terms of who is the target market. The timing is right because the Web is finally viewed as a business platform.

Back in the ASP days, it was all about hosting. In the SaaS world, hosting is still extremely important, but there has been a change over the last 7 to 10 years.  The new approach includes infrastructure providers, application providers, and hosting and managed-service providers.  It's a kind of "ecosystem". Each has a role to play.  They each have a core expertise. Through building of this ecosystem and through partnerships, vendors can be much more successful in being able to lower deployment costs, but still be able to target and go after new markets.

The SaaS market isn't just a fad. It's becoming more vertically focused.  There will be content, business applications, data, and services. If all of those can be offered in a single environment through a single service provider, the customer will end up winning.

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Maximize the Value of On-Demand CRM with On-Demand Reporting
 
After years of relatively stagnant growth, organizations of all sizes are now starting to embrace and rapidly adopt the SaaS (software as a service) model for business applications.  With no software or hardware to buy, install, maintain or upgrade, the popularity of SaaS - also known as on-demand software - is growing steadily as organizations are increasingly being asked to do more with less, in a shorter period of time.   There is a bewildering array of third party reporting and analytic options, add-ons and tools available to make sense of all that raw data.
 
What should you look for in an on-demand reporting tool?

Proven reliability and stability - Select a vendor with a proven track record.

Performance reliability - Review the vendor's performance records and hosting    company relationships.

Security - SAS 70 certification, encryptions and other technical safeguards should be in place.

Strength in partners - Vendors with an extensive partner base simplify finding outside expertise if needed.

Scalability / flexible pricing model - The solution should be adoptable in increments, with monthly subscription pricing

Wide compatibility - The vendor should be able to work with data from a variety of data sources.

The ability to leverage your existing investments - You should be able to continue to use existing reporting solutions.

Breadth of solutions - It is likely that your company will want more sophisticated analytical capabilities over time.

The new breed of on-demand reporting solutions has empowered organizations of all sizes with the ability to easily and quickly share actionable information with employees, partners and others who may need it.  Organizations can also reduce expenditures on software and hardware, shorten deployment cycles, and optimize existing IT investments.  Reporting will help your organization make better decisions.  On-demand reporting allows you to accomplish this task in a fast, cost-effective and convenient way.

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SaaS Adoption Set to Explode by Nicholas Carr

Large companies appear to be jumping en masse onto the software-as-a-service bandwagon, according to a new survey of CIOs by management consultants McKinsey & Company. The survey found that 61% of North American companies with sales over $1 billion plan to adopt one or more SaaS applications over the next year, a dramatic increase from the 38% who were planning to install SaaS apps in 2005.

McKinsey regularly surveys a panel of CIOs and other senior IT executives from big companies in the United States and Canada to track their plans and priorities. The companies included in the surveys are chosen from a cross-section of industries that mirrors the makeup of the overall U.S. and Canadian economies. The most recent survey was completed in October 2007; the prior one was completed in Summer 2005.

There are several factors driving the rapid increase in the adoption of SaaS. Some of the factors are economic. CIOs, they said, are coming to see SaaS as offering lower up-front costs, lower total ownership costs, and faster implementation than traditional licensed software. That substantially increases the likelihood a new application will provide an attractive return on investment.

Also propelling the trend is a desire for greater vendor accountability. CIOs, explained the consultants, have long been frustrated at their inability to get clearly defined service commitments from software vendors. Because the vendors don't own the infrastructure their applications run on, they've been able to avoid accountability for the performance of their software. But with SaaS, there's no such accountability gap. Because SaaS vendors are responsible for the infrastructure as well as the application, they have nowhere to hide should something go wrong. Buyers get an unambiguous, single point of accountability for performance - a big plus, in the eyes of CIOs.

The embrace of SaaS is part of a broader shift in the way big-company CIOs think about information technology. CIOs are rapidly abandoning the assumption that they should own and control their entire IT architecture. Instead, they're embracing the idea of a "hybrid architecture" that combines components maintained internally with components hosted or otherwise supplied by outsiders. This model promises to bring greater efficiency as well as greater flexibility - for both IT and the business in general.

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Talkin' Turkey  
 
This year's Thanksgiving debriefing is provided by longtime eIS client, Carol Brunt of TC Petroleum:  "We had a total of 54 friends and relatives!
 
Dinner included:  35lb Turkey, 8lb ham ,4lb string beans, 3lb broccoli,3lb curried carrots, 4lb baby carrots, 18lb white potatoes, 15lb sweet potatoes, 3lb turnips, 3lb ziti,Waldolf salad, 49-dinner rolls, 1 loaf pumpkin bread,1 loaf zucchini bread, chestnut stuffing and turkey gravy.

And for dessert: 2-Apple Crumb Pies, apple pie, ice cream cake, chocolate chip cheesecake, pumpkin pie, pecan peach pie, home made cookies, and fruit with a chocolate fountain (the kids loved it, they told me it rocked!).
 
So did I make you hungry?   It's an experience! I bought my husband Mel a turkey hat that he has to wear when he carves the turkey. This year he added a union jack apron. What a sight!"

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A Word From Bob
 
Shiny new cell phones might make for great stocking stuffers, but for every new mobile device purchased there's an old phone that needs to be recycled. If you're prone to hiding last year's model in a desk drawer or, even worse, (and I'm guilty of this) throwing it in the trash (a major environmental no-no), think again. This holiday season, you might consider swapping it for some cash.  You won't make much, but companies like Flipswap and CellForCash.com will actually pay you for your old phone, which they then resell.