IT Strategic Consulting Services

We just starting to enjoy Spring weather in New England. By comparison, the Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) is in full bloom. Its success combined with the maturation of the Managed Services market have helped to fuel the rapid growth of Cloud Computing. I see it as the dawning of a new season in the technology industry.

And, I'm pleased to be seeing a growing number of organizations of all sizes, across nearly every industry, embracing these service alternatives and quickly experiencing their tangible business benefits.

Last week I was a keynote speaker and panel moderator at SaaScon, where CIO after CIO from many prominent companies sang the praises of SaaS and other cloud-based services. They talked of the joys of deploying applications quickly and easily, and the pleasures of satisfying the needs of their end-users and corporate executives. But, they also offered plenty of advice regarding vendor selection, contracting, integration, security and other issues.

These positive experiences were recently reinforced by THINKstrategies' joint survey with Datamation. Click here to read more about our findings.

I also had the opportunity last week to speak at CompTIA's Annual Membership Meeting, a gathering of IT solution providers, including value-added resellers (VARs) and systems integrators (SIs) about the virtues and challenges associated with moving to the 'cloud'. Many of these senior executives are concerned about being 'dis-intermediated', yet know they need to become an active part of this new era in the technology industry.

I founded THINKstrategies in 2001 to help organizations understand the business implications of these new 'on-demand' services, and capitalize on the tangible benefits being generated by the shift in the technology industry from product-centric to services-driven solutions.

Over the last eight and a half years, I have consulted with and spoken to hundreds of companies of all sizes about how they can leverage these service alternatives to achieve their corporate objectives. In addition, THINKstrategies supports many industry events and associations aimed at educating users, vendors and others about SaaS, managed services and the 'cloud'.

You can find our latest news, views, events and other activities in this newsletter.

I also encourage you to check out a series of online industry presentations I'm producing regarding important industry trends via Brainshark, an easy-to-use, online authoring and distribution tool.

THINKstrategies' SaaS Showplace and Managed Services Showplace sites continue to be the top-ranked, online directories and best practice resource centers in their respective markets according to Google.

Thanks to Novell and Verio for being our newest sponsors of the SaaS Showplace.

THINKstrategies also announced its first Cloud Computing Business Value (CCBV) Award winner this week, and we continue to add more Best of SaaS Showplace (BoSS) Award winners to our roster. You can read more about the awards programs below.

We are pleased to have nearly 12,400 subscribers to this newsletter, including IT/business decision-makers, IT solution providers, technology investors, and business and industry press!

Please contact me if you'd like to learn more about THINKstrategies' consulting, strategic marketing and education services. Or, you can watch my overview of THINKstrategies' services.

Thanks for your continued support!

Jeff Kaplan

Managing Director

THINKstrategies

The Reinvention of the Cloud Reseller

Last month, I discussed the SaaSification of IT with the growing receptivity and adoption of SaaS-based IT management solutions by IT professionals helping to widen and accelerate the market for business-oriented SaaS solutions.

There is another trend which will make SaaS and cloud computing even more mainstream -- the acceptance and promotion of these 'on-demand' services by traditional, mainstreet-oriented institutions.

What if your accountant recommended a SaaS solution to help you track your finances? Or, your banker offered you an online marketplace with an assortment of cloud-based services to help you better run your business? Would this make you more comfortable using these web services?

Last year, the AICPA teamed with Intacct to offer SaaS financial management solutions through accounting firms. Last month, Bank of America launched a new online marketplace to help their commercial customers better manage their operations. I think these alliances and initiatives will encourage many small- and mid-size businesses (SMBs), as well as large-scale enterprises to consider and utilize SaaS/cloud services, and will redefine the nature of the channel in the software and technology industry.

Click here to read my commentary in E-Commerce Times about this trend, or read my recent blogpost about how the channel is being redefined in the SaaS and cloud computing marketplace.

Click here to read about the other key competitive battlefields in the cloud computing arena in 2010.

Contact me if you'd like to discuss how these trends might impact your business, or if you would like to have me present THINKstrategies' perspectives to your management team, staff, customers or partners.

THINKstrategies SaaS and Cloud Computing Award Programs

As a result of the success of THINKstrategies' Best of SaaS Showplace (BoSS) Awards program, we have launched a new award program to promote the business benefits of the Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) and Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) segments of the cloud computing market -- the Cloud Computing Business Value (CCBV) Awards.

We issued our first CCBV Award this week to Caspio who provides a on-demand, do-it-yourself, web application creation Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) which replaces coding with intuitive point-and-click wizards, enabling users to rapidly produce web database components for capturing, publishing, and managing data online. Caspio's customers range from one-person entrepreneurs to Fortune-500 corporations, digital media giants, government agencies, and educational institutions. Click here to read about the measurable business benefits Caspio has been able to deliver to its customers.

Since the launch of the BoSS Awards, we have received a continuous stream of nominations which have produced over forty BoSS Award winners worldwide, across a wide array of areas.

Click here to read more about the Cloud Computing Business Value Award program or to apply for an award, or click here to read about the BoSS Award winners to date and learn more about the nomination process.

Industry Overviews and Primers

One of THINKstrategies' primary missions is educating corporate executives about the business implications of the migration of the technology industry from a product-centric to a services-driven model.

As a part of this ongoing effort, I've produced a series online presentations which define and describe the key trends driving the growth of SaaS, managed services and cloud computing, as well as the opportunities and challenges which these 'on-demand' services create. Click here to access these online presentations.

THINKstrategies has also published two primers to help CIOs and independent software vendor (ISV) executives better understand the real benefits and challenges associated with SaaS.

The SaaS primer for CIOs helps them better understand these on-demand service alterantives to on-premise applications.

The SaaS Primer for ISVs help these companies better understand these operational requirements. The Primer includes THINKstrategies' fifteen point scorecard which have been developed as a part of our SaaS Readiness Assessment Services program.

Contact me if you'd like to learn more about benefits and pitfalls of SaaS, or would like more information about how you can leverage our consulting and educational services to achieve your business objectives.

Upcoming Events

I will providing THINKstrategies' perspective regarding the SaaS, cloud computing and managed services markets at the following industry events in the coming weeks,

Under the Radar - 'Commercializing the Cloud', April 16, Mountain View, CA. (Friends of THINKstrategies get $100 off the conference registration fee by clicking here.)
AlwaysOn 'OnDemand' Conference, April 19-21, Palo Alto, CA. (Friends of THINKstrategies receive a special 50% discount on a conference registration by clicking here.)
"Shining Light on Your SaaS Strategy and Go-to-Market Execution", a webinar hosted by AT&T, Thursday, April 22 at 1:30-2:30pm ET.
State of the Cloud (SOTC) Executive Conference 2010, April 26-27, Boston, MA. (THINKstrategies' friends can save $100 by using promo code JKC3 by clicking here.)
Pervasive Software's Metamorphosis Conference: The Integration Summit, May 5-6, San Jose, CA.
All About the Cloud SIIA Conference, May 10-12, San Francisco, CA. (Use promo code PRMTHINK to get $100 off the SIIA non-member regisration rate. Discount does not apply to current registrants.)

THINKstrategies is also supporting the following industry events,

Telecoms Cloud Services Summit, April 22-23, London, UK.
2010 MIT Sloan CIO Symposium, May 19, Cambridge, MA. (Friends of THINKstrategies can get 15% discount off the registration fee by using promo code: thinkstrategies2010.)
Gluecon, May 26-27, Denver, CO.
2nd Annual Cloud Computing World Forum, June 29-30, Olympia, London (Use promo code TStrat for a 20% discount on the conference registration. Attend Expo and Workshops free.)