Like most software companies today, you’re probably trying to figure out your Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) strategy and it may be proving difficult.

In a world where doing more with less is imperative, software executives are contemplating various platforms and 3rd party services to speed up time to market and reduce overall development costs allowing them to focus on what they do best – building software that their customers love.

In this webinar, you will hear from Jesse Kliza, Director of Business Development at Apprenda, the makers of the SaaSGrid SaaS application server which is quickly becoming the solution of choice for serious software companies both large and small.  Jesse will share Appenda’s view about the many benefits of using solutions like SaaSGrid to build and commercialize SaaS applications.  Additionally you will hear from Luis Aburto, CEO of Scio Consulting, a premier SaaS product development outsourcing company based in San Jose, CA about why after years of building SaaS applications from scratch, they now recommend using SaaSGrid and other similar solutions.

Finally, you will hear from Nate Rowe, CEO of Appoint IT, about how and why he choose to work with Scio to build an appointment scheduling SaaS application on SaaSGrid and how they were able to go from product idea to paying customers in less than 6 months.

Join Apprenda, Scio Consulting, and Appoint IT for a webinar that will show you how just like Appoint IT, you can go from a product idea to SaaS customers faster than you ever thought possible.

Fri, Sep 25, 2009 1:00 PM – 2:00 PM EDT

This slideshare suggests I am not.

We are constantly building SaaS products for small startups, including those in the MS BizSpark program, and see that some now need to go beyond seed funding.

How can I find other VC that are actively investing in the SaaS marketplace?

https://www2.gotomeeting.com/register/951920971

http://polls.linkedin.com/poll-results/24295/gnhbo

As of Feb 26, with 13 respondents, these are the results:

Indication of Dominant Technologies Used in SaaS Applications

Things that usually go wrong with SaaS applications built in house are:
•    Pricing engine
•    Scalability
•    Multi-tenancy
•    Security
•    Compliance

If not done right, these can leads to additional development and operational costs, and lost business in the future.

If time to market is a concern for you, a SaaS Development Outsourcing Company can be familiar with platforms and tools that can help:
•    Reduce development costs
•    Accelerate time to market
•    Implement best practices
•    Reduce risk of design mistakes

If cost and productivity are concerns for you, some SaaS Development Outsourcing Companies are experts at SaaS product development using Agile project management and can reduce development costs by leveraging a nearshore development center in Mexico.

So basically it comes down to whether or not you feel you have everything under control and have minimized the risks.

Scio Consulting and Apprenda have announced a strategic partnership to offer enablement services for software companies looking to bring their products to the on-demand business model rapidly and efficiently by using Apprenda’s SaaSGrid , a Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) delivery platform.

Read more..

http://www.gartner.com/it/page.jsp?id=593207&format=print

By 2012, 80 per cent of all commercial software will include elements of open-source technology. Many open-source technologies are mature, stable and well supported. They provide significant opportunities for vendors and users to lower their total cost of ownership and increase returns on investment. Ignoring this will put companies at a serious competitive disadvantage. Embedded open source strategies will become the minimal level of investment that most large software vendors will find necessary to maintain competitive advantages during the next five years.

By 2012, at least one-third of business application software spending will be as service subscription instead of as product license. With software as service (SaaS), the user organisation pays for software services in proportion to use. This is fundamentally different from the fixed-price perpetual license of the traditional on-premises technology. Endorsed and promoted by all leading business applications vendors (Oracle, SAP, Microsoft) and many Web technology leaders (Google, Amazon), the SaaS model of deployment and distribution of software services will enjoy steady growth in mainstream use during the next five years.

http://java.dzone.com/articles/saas-platforms-for-isvs-who-wi

Development Problems for SaaS
SaaS is highly disruptive for existing hardware and software providers. SaaS platforms are different from traditional computing platforms like J2EE and .NET in three ways:

* SaaS platforms contain new core components, such as web services APIs to integrate to other applications and usage-based billing capabilities. This disrupts existing platform providers like BEA and Microsoft.
* SaaS platforms are designed for multi-tenancy, including global and tenant-specific data schemas, multi-layer administration and virtualization for scalability. This disrupts traditional ISVs like Oracle and SAP.
* SaaS platform are delivered on-demand, not on premises. This threatens the business of traditional hardware providers like IBM and HP.
* SaaS products need on-demand customization tools. As SalesForce has demonstrated, a complete SaaS application needs its own customization tools if it is to compete with enterprise solutions like Siebel and SAP.
* SaaS products need on-demand integration capabilities. This includes ability to integrate with on-premises data (a notorious weakness of pure-cloud solutions like Force.com) as well as with on-premise and on-demand web services.

SaaS Architecture Requirements

McKinsey identified three elements of a SaaS architectures:

1. Development environment: an on-demand development platform for creating SaaS applications. This platform should be able to ship along with the application itself to allow customers to customize their application.
2. Run-time environment: an on-demand infrastructufre to deliver applications. This can be a proprietary hosting environment like SalesForce, or an open hosting environment like Amazon EC2. Ideally, the customer should be able to deploy applications on-demand or on premises depending on their security, data integration and other requirements.
3. Ecosystem for adding new capabilities to applications (e.g., SalesForce AppExchange). This ecosystem should also be able to access enterprise data and services located inside the enterprise firewall.

Let’s start with the obvious ones:

SaaS platform – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

A SaaS Platform is a computer program or collection of more than one computer program that acts as a host to applications that reside on it. …

Oracle SaaS Platform

Enabling SaaS Vendors to Build, Deploy and Manage Software as a Service. The Oracle SaaS Platform technologies enable ISVs adopting the SaaS delivery model …

Apprenda – SaaSGrid Platform as a Service (PaaS)

As the industry’s most powerful SaaS platform, SaaSGrid empowers software companies to build complex on-demand .NET business applications at .

NetSuite Unveils SuiteScript™ First SAAS Platform For Business …

NetSuite CRM+ is the first hosted customer relationship management (CRM) application that integrates order management, partner management, …

Microsoft SaaS – Software as a Service – SaaS Platform – Service …

In order to introduce the various aspects of the Microsoft platform that are applicable to building SaaS applications, it is useful to examine the core .

SaaS Platform Technologies

Virtualization is a key component of a cost effective SaaS platform which provides a wide variety of applications. Parallels Virtuozzo Containers provide an

Salesforce.com launches SaaS platform | InfoWorld | News | 2007-04 …

With the announcement on Monday of Salesforce Platform Edition, Salesforce.com finally unveiled its long-term strategy to become the sun