Haut Tech

People say that marketing for “cloud services” are really over the top right now – selling a lot more promise than can be delivered. If that’s true, social media is somewhere out in the stratosphere of hype – pushed into orbit by leaders like Twitter and Facebook – I’ve heard many people say if they were trying to avoid reading yet another article on the wonders of connecting to “communities” on the web.

We recently started a project with a new client from the UK to develop a SaaS application for them using Innovation Games and found them to be very useful in developing and prioritizing product features and development plans.

I’ve noticed there are broadly two camps when it comes to developing new services for the Internet: Those entrepreneurs that feel they must do everything themselves regardless of the hurdles they face and those that want to focus on their core expertise and leverage outside services where possible.

In our first two podcasts for Haut Tech Conversations we covered service and pricing. Both subjects are critical for SaaS businesses to consider and understand in the context of their product. In the podcast we did yesterday, we went into yet another critical area – Marketing!

SaaS is not a “one-size-fits-all” business. There are many options now for platforms and services you can use and the number is increasing every day. A lot of the information available is laden with marketing hype. How do you make the right decisions?

In Part 1 of this list we covered the first five points – so if you haven’t read that already, I encourage you to go and read that first. For everyone else – here’s the remaining five points in my hit parade.

They say everybody likes lists. Miles of virtual paper have been inked in pursuit of the “best recipes for chocolate chip cookies,” the “worst airline food,” and to complete the theme – the best diet plans. Ok then- we’ve got a list:
Ten Ways to Fail as a SaaS Company

This month on Haut Tech Conversations we kick off our series of best practice shows with a look at the core feature of SaaS, Cloud and on-demand applications – Service. As we explored in our last article, we’re going to discuss how current vendors are dealing with their service offerings, what is often lacking, and what is on the part of the vendors and the industry as a whole.

Although in reality, business services provided through the Internet are nothing new, the number and breadth of services now available is certainly worthy of note. As a Gartner report recently noted – we are most likely at the peak of the hype cycle which in “Gartner speak” leads to the “slope of enlightenment” and eventually to mainstream adoption in the enterprise.

There has been a lot of ink wasted on “Best Practices” for SaaS vendors. From my point of view, most of them have been either self-serving (use our services, platform, secret sauce) or suitable only for framed embroidery beside your desk. We’re going to waste some more….