THINK IT Services

THINKstrategies  announced today that Right90 has been named the latest winner of the Best of SaaS Showplace (BoSS) Awards program, which is aimed at promoting the measurable business benefits being delivered by today’s Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) solutions.

The BoSS Awards is an ongoing program which recognizes SaaS companies that are producing tangible business benefits for specific user organizations. These benefits can include increased sales, lower costs, higher customer satisfaction, faster operations and greater profitability.  

Right90’s SaaS-based sales forecasting solution enables companies to quickly and accurately generate more accurate unit and revenue forecasts. And, by integrating with leading customer relationship (CRM) and enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems, Right90’s solution helps companies to achieve higher revenue, greater operating efficiencies and increased margins.

Click here to read more about Right90’s award winning business benefits.

Click here to read more about the BoSS Awards program and to apply for an award.

Based on the success of the BoSS Awards program which focuses on SaaS solutions, THINKstrategies has launched the Cloud Computing Business Value (CCBV) Awards program to recognize companies which are delivering Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) and Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) solutions producing measurable business benefits for their customers. For more information regarding the CCBV Awards, go to http://www.thinkstrategies.com/cloudcomputingawards.html.

Today’s announcement of a new OpenStack consortium, led by Rackspace and NASA, could help the cloud  computing movement quickly overcome user concerns regarding vendor lock-in by establishing a open-source platform to encourage industry standards for cloud interoperability.

While there will always be cynicism and debate about the feasibility of creating industry-wide technology standards, this initiative appears to have ‘legs’ for a number of reasons,

• The initiative promotes the use of generally accepted Open Source stack technologies and approaches which are already popular in the cloud computing industry,
• The strength and diversity of the ‘charter’ members of the OpenStack consortium represents a powerful group of technology vendors, service providers and enterprise users.

Although vendor/service provider deployment of the OpenStack code and technology may still vary based on the proprietary interpretations of the standards by specific companies, this initiative will still have a positive impact on the overall growth of the cloud computing movement by alleviating some of the anxiety and apprehension which many potential users feel about potential lock-in.

By capitalizing on the broader acceptance of the Open Source idea and solutions, the OpenStack consortium should receive a positive response from a growing array of IT and business decision-makers interested in leveraging cloud computing to achieve their corporate objectives.

For the past two weeks, I’ve been debating whether to respond to a commentary in InfoWorld by Neil McAllister which asked, “Is the SaaS Experiment Finally Over?”

But, I couldn’t hold back any longer when one of the many online publications where I’m a contributor, eBizQ, posed the question in a more provocative fashion, “Is SaaS Dead?”

I couldn’t bring myself to respond to McAllister’s column when it was first published because his argument was so ludicrous. He alluded to a variety of past SaaS and cloud vendor service outages to raise concerns about the overall viability of these rapidly expanding markets. And he used a series of Gartnerisms to warn against developer migration to the SaaS model.  

Yet, McAllister ignores the pervasive failures of traditional on-premise software which has inspired organizations of all sizes to explore and increasingly adopt SaaS alternatives to better meet their corporate needs.

The truth is that Gartner has been wrong about SaaS since the beginning. Even today, it has failed to fully recognize the current rate of SaaS adoption because they only talk to their traditional IT clients who are still trying to resist today’s trends because they see them as a threat to their jobs.

For instance, I reported earlier this year about Pacific Crest’s CIO survey which found that they expect to spend approximately 30% of their software budgets on SaaS in 2010, while Gartner is still predicting that organizations will only spend 25% of their budgets on SaaS by 2012.

Gartner also refuses to recognize the growing array of customer success stories which clearly illustrate the tangible and measurable business benefits being generated by SaaS and the broader cloud computing services.

Meanwhile, THINKstrategies has been recognizing SaaS and cloud computing providers nearly every week for the past year and a half which are delivering these business benefits worldwide through our Best of SaaS Showplace (BoSS) and Cloud Computing Business Value Award programs.

Rather than acknowledge the benefits of SaaS, and other cloud computing services, Gartner prefers to publish endless warnings which simply propose commonsense vendor selection and management principles.

The fact is that the SaaS ‘experiment’ is definitely over. It is now a mainstream movement.

Just take a look at the growth of Salesforce.com and SuccessFactors. Or, check out how NetSuite and Workday are encroaching on SAP. Listen to CIOs who are frustrated with being in the server business and want to shift into the services business.

And, pay attention to the major moves which the ‘legacy’ hardware and software players–led by IBM, HP, Microsoft, Oracle and SAP–are taking to transform and even cannibalize their traditional business to respond to rapidly escalating customer demands for change.

Yes, the SaaS experiment is over. It is now for real.

THINKstrategies announced today that Post Vision Technology’s Project Portfolio Office (PPO) has been named the latest winner of the Best of SaaS Showplace (BoSS) Awards program, and the first company based in Africa to be recognized by the program which is aimed at promoting the measurable business benefits being delivered by today’s Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) solutions.

Project Portfolio Office is a web-based application designed, developed and supported in South Africa to assist organizations to manage projects and project portfolios in various industries. It is offered on SaaS platform, and is an enterprise solution capable of bringing together all the elements necessary for typical projects.

Click here to read about the measurable business benefits which Project Portfolio Office delivered to the the Development Bank of South Africa (DBSA), in conjunction with National Treasury, which launched the Siyenza Manje Programme, an initiative aimed at providing hands-on support to distressed municipalities in the delivery of infrastructure, accelerating service delivery, and ensuring the sustainable growth of capacity in South Africa’s local government.

Click here to learn more about the BoSS Award program and to apply for an award.

Based on the success of the BoSS Awards program which focuses on SaaS solutions, THINKstrategies has launched the Cloud Computing Business Value (CCBV) Awards program to recognize companies which are delivering Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) and Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) solutions producing measurable business benefits for their customers. For more information regarding the CCBV Awards, go to http://www.thinkstrategies.com/cloudcomputingawards.html.