I came across a good paper by Joel York of Chaotic Flow over the weekend that started a flow of thoughts about ISVs. The article is titled, “The Top Ten Do’s and Don’ts of SaaS” and it made me wonder – where can someone considering developing a SaaS application go for the “ins and outs” of the field? It is fairly difficult to do without sifting through a lot of vendor-led material that, while good, is clearly biased or paying out some cash to go to a series of conferences – where again, you will surf through a wealth of vendor-led discussions regardless of the venue.
After some looking – I determined it isn’t all that easy. There are some good resources, but a simple Google search isn’t going to yield a lot of good resources without some digging. Outside of the listings on our blogroll (right sidebar of the index page), we (the Scio Team) are planning to develop some over a period of time, but for now I would like this post to be a starting point for a list of resources that we can build on to. Eventually it will migrate over to our new “knowledge center” but for now, we’ll add resources as we run across them (or you, our readers suggest them) to this post.
Key: NC= Free = No cost resource, R=Registration Required, $=Costs for attending or using
Conferences
- Saas University ($ – however you can join the Softletter SaaS University site by registration for free. Select the Welcome to SaaS U tab for information)
- SaaSCon ($) Computerworld’s Annual Industry Event
- SIIA (Software Information Industry Association) Events
- OpSource SaaS Summit ($ – Also provides links to upcoming webinars which are free for registration)
- IDC Software as a Service Summit – ($) Market research and field case studies from leading ISVs
- Cloud Slam ’09 Cloud Computing Virtual Conference (R, $ – but the price is low)
- Agile 2009 Conference - If you’re not using Agile principles in your development and product management practices – you probably should be. Of special interest is the Agile Product Management track
- Glue Conference - “The web is the platform” – explores the integration issues we’re facing as we move to web apps. ($)
- Upcoming Cloud Computing-Related Events – Giva Perry’s list (updated regularly).
Resources on the Web
- Wikipedia’s definition of SaaS, along with general facts about the area and references. (Free)
- SIIA, (Software Information Industry Association) – Software as a Service Resources. A wide ranging archive of webcasts and papers from the last four years from this association. (Some require membership, some free) – a good example you will find widely copied on the web: “Software as A Service: A Comprehensive Look at the Total Cost of Ownership if Software Applications“
- OpSource – Resources (Free). From their position as a leading SaaS hosting provider, this resource center remains one of the best available.
- SaaS resource listings from O’Reilly – (Mostly Free – some conferences are listed as well) The well-known industry resource has a lot to offer, both technical and business-led perspectives.
- IBM SaaS Resources – IBM is a vendor of managed hosting in the SaaS space and has offerings to facilitate ISVs moving to SaaS. This link leads to a number of resources (whitepapers, podcasts and webcasts) prepared for their community that are worth review.
- THINKstrategies Publications, Columns, Webcasts and Quotes – Research from one of the leading consultancies in the On-Demand space. (Free – some may require registration with vendors)
- SaaS Showplace – also from THINKstrategies
- Managed Services Showplace® – THINKstrategies MSP Directory
- SoftLetter – from Rick Chapman of SaaS University ($) Respected source for current data from inside the SaaS industry. (Softgram newsletter is free for registration)
- Chaotic Flow’s five-part series, “Transform your SaaS into a Web 2.0 Business” (Free)
- SaaS Scorecard from Joel York of Chaotic Flow. Also see – SaaS Model Economics and SaaS Success – Top Ten Dos and Don’ts (Free)
- IP Application’s Resource Center (R) – good resource and their blog is worth some time as well.
- Saugatuck Technology’s Research Library - (R & $ – Market research papers, some that are free with registration, some for a fee)
- Resource List from the Cloud Computing Group on LinkedIn – Cloud Computing Blogs & Resources
- Innovation Games – A very smart tool for Agile development and Agile development is key for SaaS products.
- Body of Work: Community and Social Network Research – Jeremiah Owyang of Forrester Research on Social Media. This is a key area all Internet-based businesses need to include in their business plans.
Alltop – Alltop is blog and news aggregator that has several groupings of sources of interest to ISV’s and start-ups in the On-Demand world.
- Virtualization
- Rich Internet Apps
- Cloud Computing (Includes SaaS)
- Project Management
- Enterprise (Includes SaaS and a broad range of “enterprise level” subjects)
- Product Management
- Startups
- Small to Medium Business (SMB)
You can go to our website http://www.ipapplications.com and sign up for access to our documentation center under the resource tab. We have a free Saugatuck white paper (Saugatuck is probably the most noted SaaS industry analyst firm). We also have some other materials there on PCI compliance, a subscription management and billing capabilities matrix and we will continue to put up new materials. If you are interested in what Saugatuck Technologies has to say you can go to their website http://www.saugatech.com and sign up for their free update service.
FYI, I have attended all the conferences you mentioned and more and they do provide a ton of great information. However they are expensive and it can get to be some pretty strong Kool-aid after you attend a number of them. For anyone starting out though I would highly recommend them because they are very content focussed and their are a number of enabling vendors that can help you out.
Cheers
Kevin Lennox
VP Sales, IP Applications
Thanks Kevin for pointing those out – I’ll add them to the list! I have looked at Saugatech before but for some reason I didn’t put them on the list when I wrote up the piece.
We’ll fix that!
Mike
Principal Consultant
Scio
One of the major hurdles for ISVs who are researching the SaaS model is the “cash issue”. In the on-premise world, a traditional software sale comprises an upfront purchase payment coupled with an annual maintenance fee which is usually 20-25% of the purchase price. In the SaaS world up-front setup fee’s are either eliminated, or are substantially lower, and the software is typically billed on a month by month basis depending on usage (eg number of active user accounts). The pros are vast: you build sustained recurring revenues; greatly increase geographic reach; are able to easily up sell additional components and increase the value proposition; eliminate on-premise infrastructure challenges and many more. The major con is that you don’t have a lump of cash to cover costs (such as sales commissions) when the deal is completed.
IBM produced a good article entitled “A Financial Model for ISVs Looking at SaaS” which can be downloaded here: http://downloads.thinhost.co.uk/resources/isv/cash_issue/IBM_Study.pdf
ISVs with 32-bit apps can easily move to a SaaS model by partnering with ThinHost ( http://www.thinhost.net ) who specialise in Windows based thin client hosting and helping ISVs multi-tenant their applications for SaaS without having to re-write the apps.
Ricky Reemer
CEO, Unicorn IT (the company behind ThinHost)
Hi Michael,
Thanks so much for mentioning Cloud Connect in your post! Feel free to become a fan on our facebook page http://www.facebook.com/pages/Mountain-View-CA/Cloud-Connect/94634750219 to keep track of updates or to see who else is interested. You can also find us on Twitter @cloudconnect. Please let me know if you’d like any additional information on this event…we also have Mobile Connect @ the Santa Clara Convention Center March 10-13 and Energy Camp @ Interop Las Vegas on May 18th…lots of exciting developments, stay tuned!
Hope you and your family have a very safe and happy holiday!
Elizabeth King
Marketing Coordinator, Techweb