SaaS Development

The development of Software as a  Service or SaaS, and its subsequent hosting, is driven by the blend of bandwidth that has become more abundant than ever, the more powerful processors and cheaper storage – which are giving more options for the design, deployment and use of software in computers and on servers, in commercial data centers and other devices. In this respect, business solutions can now be provided and consumed through these for a more engaging user experience and better business value.

On a vendor’s perspective, shifting an overall business model toward being SaaS-supporting may prove to be daunting a task. This business decision requires more than a change of revenue; it also means supporting the clients’ software and systems on a 24×7 basis upon certain service agreements.

Being a hosted delivery of software, the SaaS model promises as an alternative for businesses to reach certain objectives in a more cost-effective way than what  traditionally packaged applications offer. Essentially, SaaS’ software delivery model bills companies are not for owning software per se, but for the usage of it. In a SaaS set-up, the software provider takes charge of its availability, as well as scalability, maintenance, and disaster recovery, among others.

Hence, the concept behind SaaS lies on a premise where ISVs host service delivery infrastructure and give more focus on developing the product. While at it, SaaS hosters, as they are technically called, are allowed to provide certain expertise in operation and support services to the end-customers of independent service vendors.

Typically, SaaS hosting includes consulting services which help on-ramp ISVs into the actual hosting solution. These solutions include technology-aligned consulting services which aim to assist ISV applications’ SaaS enablement feature for “as-a-service” type of software delivery as a service. The consulting services are also business-focused for assistance in terms of compensation models, business planning, and online marketing and sales, and in some cases, outsourced call center support.

SaaS hosters provide a deeper support for ISV application, including support personnel, customized monitoring of the application, and creation of “operational” books containing detailed procedures for the hosters, with respect to the service offering of the ISVs.

It is worthy to note that a few of SaaS hosters have integrated solutions that center on customer’s provisioning, self-administration, metering or billing, among other infrastructure service features to lessen the time required for ISVs to market.

Experts predict that in a few years, SaaS hosting will get even busier – which translate to more options for ISVs. In the same manner, maturity in the offerings of SaaS hosting may be expected as competition will bring service levels to higher notch. Recent findings reveal that there are approximately 23,311 software firms present in the United States; while pointing to roughly 5,000 SaaS-related vendors or SaaS providers. With more similar ventures being funded on a yearly basis, the possibility of companies going into SaaS hosting is steadily increasing.

SaaS Vendors Gain Apparent Advantage

IT and software experts predict that the SaaS market will be experiencing a big upsurge in five years’ time. For SaaS vendor companies, this is good news. On the flip side, however, it can mean worse times for vendors of traditional software.

Studies reveal that the Saas market will increase from 5% in 2007, and is particularly expected to account for 25% of fresh enterprise software revenue in the year 2011.
Certainly, the trends with respect to business software have tremendously changed. Of course, SaaS has its shortcomings despite being an overnight success. For one, it is said to be short of sufficient maturity. Others observe that several SaaS deployments still cater to individual business units or focus within small-sized to medium-sized sectors. 

To date, research says that no SaaS provider offers process management or functionality capabilities that are at par with on-premise business software in order to support cross-departmental and end-to-end business flows. It is beyond question, though, the software preference and scale of power has started to make a considerable shift to the SaaS mode.

Top vendors believe that the SaaS model is almost reaching its tipping point, with more and more companies recognizing that they favour hassle-free installing and software management in an in-house setting. The SaaS boom caught several conventional on-premise software vendors off-guard. On the other hand, software vendor giants, such as Microsoft, are catching up in order to protect their revenues against the threat of SaaS switching clientele.

Admittedly, the software market place is swamping SaaS. With the economic situation at play, business organizations have tightened their budgets, and the amounts being poured must justify the costs of enterprise software replacement. In this regard, several companies have opted for the SaaS offering.

Alongside this software preference shift, companies have revolutionized the way they work. The limited involvement of central IT is altering as these organizations realize that SaaS solutions have provided an option, which has gained the acceptance of the mainstream market. Analysts conclude that SaaS is reshaping the business software market.

Pioneering SaaS vendors have done their part in defending and proving that the SaaS model may be a better deal than the on-premise, traditional software. With their resources at hand, people speculate that these companies may not only be mere participants, but may even be dominating the hyped SaaS scenario in the overall.

In a more general scope, SaaS vendors consist of:

 30boxes, which focuses on software for calendar or scheduling. www.software30boxes.com says it allows its clients to remember important dates, know goings-on, “get certain things done”, keep up with the latest with friends and family, and organize or share minus the hassle.

 Atlassian takes charge of enterprise wikis by affording clients with lightweight software that helps their end-clients collaborate better. According to www.atlassian.com, the term Atlassian refers to the Atlas-like service it offers.

 Coghead offers software for application templates, according to www.coghead.com. Coghead claims to have an all-in-One Internet development and application platform. It is aimed at empowering IT professionals, software developers, and technologically inclined business people for them to develop certain applications for automated business operations. Coghead says its approach is 100% Internet based, and is highly in the favor of its customers.

 www.collectivex.com says CollectiveX offers collaboration or applications platform, which it claims to likely become the core of social collaboration in an Office 2.0 environment.

 Information sharing is what DabbleDB is all about. In its Web site, www.dabbledb.com assures its potential customers that it is focusing on certain “new technology” that may be useful on an everyday basis. DabbleDB collects and finds videos from the Internet, regardless of where these are being hosted.

 Etelos offers office, sales or project management software. www.etelos.com flaunts that the company will “revolutionize the development, distribution and consumption of Internet-based applications by enterprises toward reaching their goals and targets. Etelos offers SaaS developers ease in licensing, distribution and support application. In addition, Etelos says it gives enterprises the option to fully customize on-demand applications to go for licensing and allows their deployment to the chosen hosting environment.

 Extentech is all about business intelligence, according to www.extentech.com. Extentech is a developer of tools and applications for Java, such as ExtendXLS spreadsheet SDK, Exteria business automation, ExtenXLS server, ExtenBIS BI Server and Sheetstr.com Web-based spreadsheet.

 Foldera caters to information organization aspect of an enterprise, housing its offerings at www.foldera.com.

 Genius at www.geniusnet.com offers tracking of sales prospects, particularly providing products, finance, marketing and logistics services.
 InetOffice, Inc. at http://www.inetoffice.com, caters to document creation and management needs of enterprises by developing and designing Web-based business document solutions

 With a service related to content collaboration, Koral at www.koral.com offers user-friendly solutions to manage company data in emails, folders, web pages and documents.

  www.near-time.net for Near Time discloses that the company offers software collaborations, specifically catered to group interaction and driven by data content integration.

 NetSuite, with www.netsuite.com as its official Web site, also caters to business applications, offering Internet-based enterprise software suite, such as ERP/Accounting software, E-commerce and CRM software.

 Salesforce, at www.salesforce.com - has gained its reputation as the leader in customer relationship management and applications platform services.

 www.socialtext.com or simply Socialtext, is known for the enterprise wikis it offers, through application of Web 2.0 technologies.

 SugarCRM at www.sugarcrm.com, offers open-source commercial CRM software that drives automation of sales force and deployment of customer support on site or on demand.

 www.systemone.at or System One deals with knowledge management, enterprise collaboration through a simplistic interface.

 ThinkFree at www.thinkfree.com offers word processor that is Java-based, as well as presentation packages and spreadsheets with MOffice compatibility.

 www.thinklogic.com for ThinkLogic, LLC focuses on the designing, developing, as well as supporting Web-based business software applications, catering to software companies and businesses that scope and develop Application Service Provide, custom applications or SaaS.

 Workday focuses on advocating passion for software innovation and putting emphasis on customers. As reflected in its official Web site, www.workday.com, the vendor’s services include, among others, on human capital management, payroll, financial management, procurement, resource management and expenses.

 Zoho – at www.zoho.com – offers a wide array of Web applications that geared towards productivity increase at easy collaboration