SaaS is the Future
SaaS is no longer solely for the start-up software firm. Enterprise software developers have heard the call from their customers and seen the competition latch on to SaaS and are now offering mainstream applications. Software developers, big and small, face many demands and constraints placed upon them by the market. Their customers seek rigorous specifications. The application development process comes with a whole new group of constraints, and the competition is fierce and ever present.
Gary McAuliffe, in his article Excelling in the Evolution of Sass, points to the Managed Service Provider (“MSP”) as the “great equalizer”.
Managed Service Providers engineer infrastructure for reliability, resiliency, and security, in some cases offering 100% network uptimes.
McAuliffe lays out a detailed analysis of the value MSP’s bring to the table. He describes how using an MSP can get your product to the global market faster. The other advantage is what McAuliffe labels “optimal user experience” (i.e. customer satisfaction). This customer satisfaction could potentially reap rewards downstream as opportunities for selling licenses present themselves.
The benefits are not solely for the external market. McAuliffe adroitly states:
Internally, partnering with a Managed Service Provider can provide software companies with a plethora of benefits. The capital expenditures to provide and maintain everything the business requires to launch and sustain itself from the application, developers, system administrators, to any commercial software required to run the application, along with a full infrastructure pose daunting barriers to overcome. A MSP will deliver those harsh capital expenditures over a more tolerable operational cost structure allowing software companies to reinvest their upfront capital into software where it is more beneficial in the overall well being of the firm.
If this has sparked your curiosity, then perhaps you might also be interested in Jeff Kaplan’s article Top Ten Reasons Why On-Demand Services Will Soar in 2008. I’ll whet your appetite and list out the ten reasons. You’ll have to read his whole article to get the benefit of his wisdom and predictions.
The Top Ten Reasons are as follows:
1. Services are Recession Proof
2. Everyone’s Going Virtual
3. Amazon, IBM and Google Bet on Utility Computing
4. Nick Carr Returns
5. SaaS Solves SOX
6. Managed Services 3.0, Unified Communications Services and Service Automation (Hint: The key for Kaplan is the “3.0” in the title)
7. Carriers and Channel Companies Find Success With New Services
8. Failure Doesn’t Matter
9. IT Discovers Services are the Solution
10. Wall Street Buys Into Services
