SaaS U: Increase Your Bottom Line Value with Multi-Tenancy
I can think of many reasons to be at SaaS University in Washington, DC, July 20-22, beyond my session and Scio´s workshop. But I want to be clear: The sessions at SaaS University are always changing, always relevant to developing SaaS products and successful SaaS businesses. It is the only venue available with a focus on helping SaaS vendors navigate a complex business model.
This time I have the honor to be presenting a session on the second day titled: Increase Your Bottom Line Value with Multi-Tenancy. Here is the session summary from the University agenda:
There is a lot of debate about multi-tenancy. Most of us understand its value from a technical point of view, but what can actually translate to our bottom line? How does it change what we are able to do to increase operational efficiency and customer retention?
Multi-tenancy is not a magic bullet, despite what you may have heard. Implementing your SaaS application with a multi-tenant architecture offers great returns, BUT ONLY if you understand how to leverage it along with metrics, operational automation, your ecosystem, and the network effect of your customer base – effectively.
This session will answer questions concerning the value of:
- Different architectures for implementing multi-tenancy and maintaining flexibility.
- Reliability, scalability, maintenance, and product evolution to your clients.
- Multi-tenancy in operations across your product organization.
- Implementing metrics in a multi-tenant application.
- Your customer and user network, delivery network and ecosystem under multi-tenancy.
- Methods of implementing multi-tenancy without breaking the bank or slowing product release
This session is strategic for C Level executives and product managers planning, implementing, or enhancing a SaaS offering. Participants will come away with a clear understanding of how they can leverage multi-tenancy at every level of their service and increase their bottom line potential.
This session is replacing a similarly titled session by planned Lincoln Murphy because of a scheduling conflict he has encountered. I want to thank him for his recommendation that I take his slot. I must say, although I want to keep the same broad focus for this session, my approach to this subject is different than Lincoln´s. My background with multi-tenancy comes from planning SaaS products with Scio´s customers and many years of working with companies on Internet-based business models.
In itself, multi-tenant architecture is not new. The same could be said of the SaaS business model. What is still new is the broad market attention to on-demand services and the opportunities that virtualized infrastructure gives to business. The knowledge of how to leverage architecture and technical choices to impact product features, customer value and operational effectiveness is what is lacking in my experience. This is what I will lead discussions on in my session at SaaS University.
In addition, if you aren´t aware of it, SaaS University has a third day of full day workshops that provide a ¨deep dive¨on specific subjects. Our own session is Charting Your Course to SaaS, which will help it´s participants navigate all the choices they face in developing a SaaS product while they develop a road map that can get them to market and positive cash flow sooner. I can also personally recommend Jim Geisman´s Right Pricing Your SaaS System: Beyond the Basics – Advanced Workshop. Jim and I had the opportunity recently to give a workshop together and I greatly enjoyed the experience, and I know our audience did also. Ideally, product teams should consider sending representatives to both workshops because they are complimentary points of view that are very important to understand.
So, with that background, here is the overview of our one day session at SaaS University for July 22, 2010:
Charting Your Course to SaaS – SaaS University, Washington DC, May 22
This is the third time we’ve offered this comprehensive workshop on SaaS and it continues to evolve as we respond to the needs of our participants. Following our joint workshop with Jim Geisman of Software Pricing Partners, we’ve continued to tighten the content and for SaaS University, will offer a more interactive format for this workshop, especially during the afternoon. The aim is to keep it small enough to allow everyone a chance to move the discussion toward the issues that interest them most. It remains however, the only workshop that covers the business, operational and development issues that are critical to success in SaaS.
Companies that can benefit by attending this workshop:
- A new venture or as an ISV with on-premise products considering developing a SaaS offering
- A service company with significant vertical expertise than could be delivered and monetized in a SaaS model.
- An existing SaaS provider who made choices opportunistically that now constrain growth and cash flow.
- A SaaS entrepreneur with limited funding that needs to achieve positive cash flow early with products that evolve with the market.
Company challenges this workshop can help overcome:
- Building out a suite of products but are unsure of the strategies, metrics, and operational models needed to grow.
- Developing a framework for sorting out technical and strategic choices required to move to the SaaS business model.
- Facing significant operational problems including efficiency while keeping churn under control in an existing SaaS product.
- Developing a product roadmap and unsure of what can be accomplished and timeframes
Topics to be Covered:
- How is a SaaS Product and Business Different?
- Reference Framework for Creating Your Roadmap
- Making Strategic Development Choices
- Operating A SaaS Business by the Metrics
- 10 Ways to Fail at SaaS
- Applying Lessons Learned to Your Issues
Who Should Attend?
This workshop and seminar is important for anyone considering a SaaS product, in the process of developing a product or offering a product that hasn’t reached its potential, including: Entrepreneurs, CXO’s, product managers and key executives in startups, vendors moving to SaaS or existing SaaS companies.
About Your “Professor”
Mike Dunham, Vice President, Service Engineering for Scio Consulting, has over 25 years background in the development and introduction of new technology working with startups, government and the largest enterprise software companies. He has worked with Scio for five years, regularly authors articles on SaaS and the software industry and hosts a series of podcasts on SaaS best practices. Mike leads Scio’s professional services helping companies develop and bring to market new SaaS offerings.
The workshop costs $695, but you can get an Early Bird Price of $495 when you combine it with your SaaS University registration - total package price of $1290. As a way to bring together a great amount of information in a short period of time, the combined package is a great opportunity. As we get closer to the event, I’ll expand on the agenda, but this is a great time to start planning and get your team together to attend SaaS University in Washington, DC! I hope to see you there…
