Has SaaS & Cloud forced the server operating system into irrelevance?

Jul 6, 2010 by Sinclair Schuller

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SaaS for the ISV Masses through SaaSGrid Express

Jun 7, 2010 by Sinclair Schuller

When my partners and I co-founded Apprenda, we had a number of very specific goals when it came to SaaS enablement and we wanted SaaSGrid to embody those goals. My co-founders and I all came from technical backgrounds where we were responsible for SaaS engineering efforts. We learned early on that when a SaaS application is engineered properly, its architecture is drastically different than plain old web applications (think multi-tenancy and scale-out) and that a huge number of auxilliary tools and subsystems (think billing, application life-cycle management, infrastructure management, subscriptions, identity federation, etc. and then some) are necessary for managing and operating a SaaS offering and business.

When you combined these “SaaS specific” aspects of a SaaS offering, the upfront and ongoing time and money investment required far eclipsed that of the application itself (the actual thing your customers want to pay you for!), and causes huge competency distraction. Taking on the build out and maintenance of a mature “SaaS stack” is akin to a software company deciding that it’s in their best interest to build and maintain their own DB technology in support of their business application.  Surely, most people buy RDBMS tech (like SQL Server) or download it (like PostgreSQL) to help ensure succcess, and firmly believe that they need not build their own. When we created SaaSGrid, we had some very specific things we wanted it to do:

1. Allow for the use of traditional stacks (in our case, the Microsoft .NET platform) and the wealth of tools and components already in existence for these stacks. New languages are best created in support of new modeling paradigms or changes in the ways we capture solutions, and not in support of a new delivery model. Traditional runtimes simply needed to be “enhanced” to really sing in an on-demand scenario.
2. Have it be comprehensive and not require a “paper mâché” approach to piecing together disjointed capabilities. Imagine that an operating system required that you find your networking substack from here, and a graphics subsystem from there, and then require that you mash them together. That would be sub-optimal in many ways.
3. Have SaaSGrid provide even the most complex capabilities, like multi-tenancy, as transparently as possible to the application code that runs on top of it. As technologists, we hate having technologies adulterate our code, so to the extent possible, we wanted SaaSGrid to be as low impact as possible.

We accomplished our goals and some, and our customers benefit wildly from SaaSGrid. But late last year, we were thinking about a number of things related to the market and to SaaSGrid. As a company, we’re committed to not only supporting the transition to SaaS, but to catalyzing it. I think great strides have been made with respect to software company adoption of the new delivery model, but the fact of the matter is, most ISVs are still not SaaS. Furthermore, those that want to become serious SaaS players have a tough time understanding how they can get there and what tools are available to them.

Enter SaaSGrid Express!

Anyone that follows my company Apprenda knows that we recently made a new product announcement with SaaSGrid Express. SaaSGrid Express is a freely downloadable application server that captures nearly all of the value of our tried and true SaaSGrid, and that can be used by anyone just to experiment or even to build a revenue producing business. Our goal with SaaSGrid Express is to let everyone experience the value that SaaSGrid has to offer, and more importantly, to democratize a highly complex SaaS architecture in hopes of moving the industry forward.

Phil Wainewright recently offered some excellent insight in his recent blog post regarding SaaSGrid Express; the goal of democratization also means that some people might get there hands on a technology but are simply not prepared to build their own clouds. But as Wainewright went on to point out, those same people would have gone down that path with or without SaaSGrid, so we’re happy that they’ll be able to walk away with such a robust starting point. Giving SaaSGrid Express to the world means that more people than ever before can experiment with and commit to a proper SaaS architecture, which will definitely help satisfy our vision of catalyzing the space. As Dana Gardner suggested, SaaSGrid Express opens up the potential for a “cloud standard” architecture and SaaS stack. If we accomplish that sort of de-facto standard, then the industry is definitely off to a good start. Having a de-facto SaaS stack means that people are not focusing on complex architectures, but on business value for their customers – which would be a huge win for everyone.

Something Special for YOU!

For those loyal SaaSBlogs readers that have an interest in downloading SaaSGrid Express and building an application, we’d like to offer you something special:

For the first 5 SaaSBlogs readers that sign up for SaaSGrid Express with the intention of building an application, or migrating your existing .NET offering, we’ll commit 1 hour of time from one of our engineers to personally work with you, and get you up and running with your project!

Just mention that you’d like to take us up on this special SaaSBlogs community offer in the comments section of the sign up form.

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Apprenda’s Exciting Future

Nov 9, 2009 by Sinclair Schuller

I wanted to share a quick note with all SaaSBlogs readers regarding Apprenda. You may have noticed that I haven’t been my prolific writing self as of late, but with good reason! Apprenda is a venture capital backed company, and I was very busy raising another round of funding which can definitely sap your time when it comes to fun stuff like blogging.

Well, it wasn’t all for naught!

I’m writing this post to announce a new round of funding with one of the industry’s leading venture capital firms, NEA. For anyone in the space, you may be well aware of NEA’s track record, and particularly its interest in backing infrastructure software plays like SaaSGrid. We’re thrilled to have them on board! In tough economic times, it’s even more exciting to get such a passionate vote of confidence in the team and product.

To date, we’ve been very successful at growing as a company, acquiring customers, and delivering our message but this round of funding adds the right amount of fuel to catapult Apprenda into a new phase of growth and success. Through this round, we will continue to revolutionize SaaS technology, work with new markets, and solve more problems than we ever have.

I want to thank all SaaSBlogs readers to date; my conversations on SaaSBlogs (and outside) play to my passion of SaaS, added motivation to our success so far, and will continue to be instrumental in the evolution of SaaSGrid and our market story.

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How to Fail Miserably as a SaaS Company

Oct 6, 2009 by Jesse Kliza

We (Apprenda) had a great event recently down in NYC, and our presentation was extremely well received.  It was standing room only at the Public House, and Abe presented to a great group of ISVs and tech savvy networkers that came out to join us.  Thanks again to everyone who made it out!

For those of you that couldn’t make it, Abe recently wrote a great article for Datamation that included much of what was presented.  You can check it out here.

Alternatively, if you’re already pretty competent in failing as a SaaS company, we have just what you need to become a bonafide SaaS superstar. :-)

- Jesse

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A Hidden Gem in Your “Private Beta”

Sep 30, 2009 by Jesse Kliza

Lately, I’ve had the great pleasure of being able to work with startups from the Microsoft BizSpark program that are leveraging SaaSGrid to bring their SaaS apps to market. It’s really been a blast, and it’s great to see the success they’re having and the enthusiasm about our product and what it’s doing for their business. One of the topics that has come up lately in discussions has been the concept of a “Private Beta”. Having been responsible for the go to market strategies and successful launches of software products in the past, I’ve been fortunate to have learned a number of things along the way. One hidden gem that I think many times is overlooked during a software company’s private beta phase is:

Gaining an understanding of the SPECIFIC thought process of how users evaluate the product.

Everyone wants users to tell them how great their product is and what could improve. But what if rather than just going to market with a slightly better product, you could also go to market with a keen awareness of how your target market will be evaluating your offering? This isn’t the easiest thing to do, and in order to do it, your private beta needs to be structured with this objective in mind. It can’t just be “use it and tell us what you think”. You should have a set timeline for the private beta, with well defined milestones and feedback loops, just like any other project.

Here are 3 major things to consider that should help you on your way:

1) You want to understand what the private beta users expectations are going in, before you provide them with access. You want to understand what they hope your product will do for them, what they think it will do for them (based on your website, the information you’ve given them in the past, etc), and why they are interested.

2) Next, you want to understand their immediate first impression. When they initially are provided access, what did they think? What questions did they have immediately? What impressed them right away.

3) Further on, you want to understand the reasons that these users find value in the offering.

Capture this information, document it, analyze it…etc.

Ultimately, you want to understand what you can do to keep your future customers engaged and extremely successful at every point of their relationship with you. When they initially contact you, when they are evaluating your solution, when they sign on and begin using your product, AND hopefully when they are evangelizing your product to others.

BONUS: Here’s an example of a first step and email to kick things off:

Send a precursor email or call (depending on your participant numbers) that tells them that you are preparing to open up access to them in the coming week, but that first you would like them to tell you why they are interested and what they hope your product will do for them. Ask them to simply respond, so that you have some real data about their personal expectations and hopes for your product.

EXAMPLE EMAIL TO SEND FIRST:

Hello _______, Thank you again for your interest in <INSERT YOUR PRODUCT NAME HERE>. We are excited to inform you that next week we will be providing you access to <INSERT YOUR PRODUCT NAME HERE> in response to your interest in our Private Beta. Before that time we would like you to simply respond to this email and tell us why you are interested in particpating, and what you hope <INSERT YOUR PRODUCT NAME HERE> will do for you. We are collecting this data now, before you see <INSERT YOUR PRODUCT NAME HERE>, so that we have an understanding of what your personal expectations and hopes for our product are. Our goal is to make our customers/users wildly successful. Understanding your expectations prior to your initial impressions will help us to better hone our messaging, so that we can communicate the value of our offering most effectively. We greatly appreciate you taking the time to respond with this information and we look forward to working with you.

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