Haut Tech

I can think of many reasons to be at SaaS University in Washington, DC 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.

The relentless change brought to us by the consistent doubling of computing power that Moore’s Law describes continues and is now likely to change at least some SaaS applications in the near term. What do I mean? Consider – we now have a very competitive mobile application market and thanks to Google Chrome and now Apple Safari, it has crossed to the desktop on browsers.

Last week our team, like lots of other members of the SaaS community, attended the OpSource/SIIA SaaS Summit 2010 – titled, “All About the Cloud.” We had a busy and meeting-filled week, as I’m sure many did.

I find much of what I read in the media about the “issues” involved in developing SaaS products as silly – and sometimes just plain misinformed. Is it just me or are there just too many analysts with nothing else to write about?

I’ve seen a lot of different “roadmaps” for SaaS products lately. Some of them are good guides for specific questions. Some are simply misleading or poorly focused. But only a few of us are talking about the guiding thoughts behind a realistic roadmap that are critical to success.

When you develop products in a repeatable, production fashion, you have to step back occasionally and take the long view so you can properly discuss the process with clients. We’ve been involved in that exercise recently and I thought it might be useful to share the what and why of our approach to software development for online products.

When I wrote the recent article “SaaS: 10 Trends for 2010″ I used the phrase “Best Case SaaS.” I realized from feedback and some thinking afterward though that many people don’t share my vision of what it is.

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!