SaaS Adoption’s Secret Weapon: Hosting Providers
It’s common place to discuss SaaS adoption as being driven by either an ISVs need to remain competitive or tackle new markets, or by customer demand to move responsibility away from internal IT to an outsourced provider. I support this as being very true, and we can thank these two constituents as being the driving force behind recent adoption. But is that all of the muscle that the SaaS movement has? Absolutely not.
Two constituents that care the most, and bring a lot of strength to the table, are enablement companies like Apprenda (our company), and application hosters (not really a ‘word’ but we’ll make it part of the post’s vernacular). Hosting companies/managed application providers are often overlooked or underplayed when discussing SaaS. Generally, the world of hosting has become a collection of relatively bland offerings with focus on “old style” services (although there are atypical cases). Most hosters are looking for a new value proposition that can move them out of a low margin commodity and back into the lime light. Building a business around SaaS alleviates the “low margin” problem and if hosters spend more time and money taking SaaS more seriously, they may become SaaS’ next champion. The more ISVs and customers they can attract, the more they can extract from this high value market.
I don’t believe SaaS adoption is set to halt by any means. In reality, I think there is still plenty of room for adoption via a collective championing of the delivery model by hosters who are looking to leverage their multi-million dollar infrastructure investments and pump up that good ‘ole revenue dollars/deployed infrastructure ratio!
Do you think that hosters can play a larger role in driving adoption? Do you see the next stage of SaaS innovation coming from hosters?
Â
Links
View Technorati Links
SaaSBlogs Tags
Tagged with: Apprenda • Enablement Platform • SaaS Models • SaaS Trust
(No Ratings Yet)
Loading ...
Sinclair -
I’m glad you bring up ‘hosters’ within the context of SaaS adoption, because it is my belief that hosting companies and MAP/MSPs hold THE KEY to growth in SaaS adoption.
Obviously, the market is driven by demand from customers and supply from ISVs. But as has been a common idea here on SaaSBlogs, SaaS is all about the delivery channel. A huge proportion of the margin to be had in delivering SaaS solutions is found in the delivery mechanism, and it is silly to believe that individual ISVs, whose expertise and infrastructure support the development of software, can somehow leverage the delivery of that software themselves. Hence the need for enablement platforms and ‘hosters’ to supply the pipe.
Additionally, let’s not forget the mitigation factor that ‘hosters’ bring to the table. Many customer concerns re: data security, hosting reliability, application availability, etc. can be quelled by an ISV confidently working with a hoster or MAP/MSP whose business IS security, reliability, and bandwidth.
You are right, the supply and demand sides of SaaS are aligned. It is the combination of good enablement technology and established hosting infrastructure (together, the ‘pipeline’), that have a bigger effect on further SaaS adoption.