Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) by LongJump

Last year, research firm IDC came out with 10 Ten Predictions for SaaS. These includes:

1. Large ISVs Will Spin Off On-Demand Versions of Products
2. Small and Medium Enterprises Remain a “Tough Nut to Crack”
3. Microsoft Strengthens SaaS Resolve
4. Software on Demand Providers Focus on Partnering
5. Mini-Ecosystems Emerge to Extend the Reach of SaaS
6. SaaS Enablers Continue to Aid Availability of On-Demand Offerings
7. Merger and Acquisition Activity Continues
8. SaaS Providers Concentrate on Improving Offerings and Customer Experience
9. Hosted Application Management Becomes a Stepping Stone Towards SaaS
10. SaaS Will Help Drive a Software Industry Transition to Subscription Licensing

Many of these seem obvious or mundane, for example the trend on the part of large software vendors (like Oracle and IBM) dabbling in SaaS products, constant talk about mergers, or Microsoft continued interest and rhetoric in the space, or all the crocodile tears being shed about the SME market and so fort and so on! There are a couple of the predictions, however, that I found rather interested and worthy of exploration:

• SaaS Providers Concentrate on Improving Offerings and Customer Experience: One of the key differentiators here at LongJump as I see it, is our focus on customer service and user experience. Companies selling into the enterprise have traditionally been on the hook for providing either first-line or second-line customer support. This notion of customer support, however, is new to the many SaaS “Internet-come-lately’s,” after all they come from a background of free use and no support. But regardless of whether you are focused on the SME or enterprise marketing, customer support become extremely important once you start collecting money from people and this is something SaaS providers need to understand.
• SaaS Will Help Drive a Software Industry Transition to Subscription Licensing: One of the traditional barriers to software sales has been the readiness of companies to buy into new pricing models. Although subscriptions are nothing new, subscription licensing for software in the enterprise is! I see traditional “enterprise-wide” per site, per CPU, per server, per seat and per user licensing is being replaced with more flexible by per user/month and storage per month type pricing or some combination of the two.