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?

We’ve been helping companies transition to SaaS as startups and from traditional licensed software for several years and we’ve build up a practice we use repeatedly to navigate the choices. We’re bringing our practice to the Dallas SaaS University event as a workshop to help SaaS executives and entrepreneurs make the right choices for their business. We’re passionate about helping companies succeed in SaaS and we’d like to pass some of our knowledge on to you.

You can take this workshop combined with your signup to the University event or separately, but I encourage you to take advantage of the combined pricing that is available. This is not a “technical” workshop – we will be covering how the technical and business decisions SaaS requires impact your business and product strategy. We’ll be using interactive exercises to help you put the concepts into your context and build something you can take back to your team. It is a full day with a catered lunch and will be a limited group so you will have plenty of opportunity to ask questions and be involved.

UpDate! – Use Discount Code: SCIO100

Here’s the outline:

Charting Your Course to SaaS

Making the Right Decisions for Your SaaS Product

Overview – How is a SaaS Product and Business “Different”?

• Leaving 30 years of industry history behind
• Transitioning to a service-led model
• 10 ways to fail

Your Service is Different

• What does making the right choices mean?
• Understanding your market, product strategy, roadmap, supporting technologies, and skills needed.
• Knowing flexibility is key in SaaS

Sell the Right Product

• Map your core product and customer assumptions
• Consider test marketing plans
• Developing a go-to-market feature set

Make Strategic Development Choices

• Selecting services and platforms
• Selecting a technical architecture
• Making development and deployment choices

Operating a SaaS Business

• Understanding service-led business requirements
• Leveraging operational metrics
• Understanding end-user interaction in SaaS and product management

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 “Professors”
Luis Aburto, CEO of Scio Consulting, is a veteran of international technology and engineering consulting for corporate and government clients in the U.S. and Latin America. Mr. Aburto is the founder of Scio Consulting, and in 2006 was responsible for focusing the direction of the company on SaaS enablement services. Luis has worked with a multitude of software companies of all sizes and across many industries, helping them make the transition to SaaS.

Mike Dunham, Principal Consultant of 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.

As I mentioned – there are several ways you can join us in this workshop and I very happy we have the opportunity to bring it to SaaS University. I’m looking forward to meeting many of my friends at SaaS University for the event. If you would like to know more about what we’re going to be doing or some help building the case so you can get company support to go, just let me know. See you there!

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)