THINK IT Services

A series of announcements over the past week clearly indicates that Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) financial management and enterprise resource management (ERP) solutions are taking hold among organizations of all sizes worldwide.

The first was Intacct’s announcement that it had grown its customer subscription base 68% in 2010 and added more than 800 new client organizations. The company also reported 94.2% of clients surveyed indicated they would recommend Intacct to their colleagues, which is a perfect example of the customer-driven referral engine which is powering the overall growth of SaaS solutions. Intacct also said that 11 of the top 100 largest CPA firms in North America have joined the Intacct Accountants Program from CPA2Biz, showing that mainstream professional service firms are also adopting SaaS and recommending their clients take advantage of these solutions as well.

Plex Systems,  a provider of SaaS-based manufacturing ERP software, announced today its overall revenues grew 27% and its recurring revenue increased 26%. The company added 37 new customers in 2010. This may not seem like a lot, but Plex’s customers represent a cross-section of the most traditional of manufacturing companies who many would think are not likely candidates for SaaS or other Cloud-oriented solutions, but are increasingly interested in alternatives to legacy applications. Plex Systems also won its largest account in 2010, Invensys Controls, a London-based, technology company focused on industrial automation, rail transportation and controls. This illustrates the global growth of the SaaS market.

Today was capped off with NetSuite’s yearend results announcement which included 16% revenue growth overall and 18% in recurring revenues in 2010, and 21% year-to-year growth in the fourth quarter. It is also boasting a growing partner network and gaining momentum through its third-party channels.

These yearend results clearly show that CFOs and CEOs are increasingly adopting SaaS to run their back-office operations.

SAP’s renewed efforts to compete in the SaaS market with its latest version of BusinessByDesign will accelerate market growth because it will give it greater credibility and visibility. Oracle’s heightened emphasis on Cloud-based solutions will also lend further validation to SaaS-based, back-office solutions.

NetSuite has unveiled a great video to promote its new Hairball Institute for Business and associated Award program aimed at curing “Software Hairball Syndrome” (SHS).

The video is a fun and effective way to bring attention to the fundamental flaws of pulling together an enterprise resource planning (ERP) system, including the endless integration, customization and support issues.

However, NetSuite’s video and award program takes aim primarily at applications focused on the individual piece-parts of an ERP system in the small- and mid-size business (SMB) segment of the market, specifically inventory and project management represented by Microsoft Great Plains and Project, financials illustrated by Intuit QuickBooks, and eCommerce exemplified by Websphere. It also can’t help itself and includes its sibling rival, Salesforce.com, as a ’standalone’ CRM solution vendor.

Yet, the real culprits of this syndrome are the bigger players–SAP and Oracle–along with a myriad of like-minded legacy software vendors. Unless NetSuite has another video and award program up its sleeve, it has missed an opportunity to squarely attack the source of SHS.

This is unfortunate because NetSuite has attributed much its recent success to the inroads it has made penetrating the regional offices and other business units within large-scale organizations who were either fed up with their legacy enterprise applications or unwilling to go down the on-premise app path.

Unlike Salesforce.com which has always been very clear through simple and straightforward messaging about the on-premise vendors who it is seeking to displace, NetSuite too often obsures its message about its primary competitors while trying to set itself apart from other SaaS vendors, and undercuts its effectiveness.

But, this is a nuance which does not seriously diminish the terrific job NetSuite has done with its latest marketing program. Instead, the video and award program should strengthen its position in the market, and help the rest of the SaaS/Cloud Computing community articulate the shortcomings of traditional software.

Since 2009 is coming to a close, I thought it would be a good time to review how I did with my predictions for the year regarding the Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) and cloud computing market.

1. On-Demand Services Move From Why To How

According to a Sandhill.com/McKinsey survey of over 850 enterprise customers at the end of 2008, 74% were already favorably disposed to adopting SaaS platforms. As a result, Gartner estimates the SaaS market will have reached approximately $8 billion at the end of 2009, a 21.9% rise from $6.6 billion in 2008. Looks like folks have moved past “why” SaaS to “how” to get the most out of their SaaS deployments.

2. New Hybrid Models

The idea of hybrid SaaS and cloud computing models has been abhorred by industry purists, but the reality is that nearly every business will rely on a combination of on-premise and on-demand resources. In 2009, the concept of “location independence” became bi-directional. It not only means that businesses can move their software and systems to the cloud, but they can now also deploy SaaS and cloud computing solutions behind their firewalls via appliances or ‘applets’. This will enable them to meet their business requirements and satisfy their psychological biases. More importantly, it will exponentially expand the addressable market for SaaS solutions and cloud computing services.

3. Short-Term Slowdown, Long-Term Growth

This is not an easy one to quantify because many SaaS/cloud computing businesses are privately held or operate within bigger companies. However, the publicly-traded SaaS players saw continued albeit slower growth. As the VCs like to say, “flat is the new up!”

4. VC/PE Retrenchment

The VCs were also very concerned in 2009 about how they spent their “dry powder”. As a result, they invested in fewer start-ups and only “topped off” a handful of existing SaaS/cloud computing portfolio companies who they believe hold the greatest promise of a solid exit. The most notorious casualty of this strategy in 2009 was LucidEra, who pioneered the SaaS business intelligence (BI) market, but was not able to generate enough sales to win a new round of funding.

5. Industry Shake-Out and Consolidation

There were many other examples of company failures and acquisitions to illustrate the consolidation and shake-out of the SaaS and cloud computing industry. For instance, Xactly acquired Centiveand Makana Solutions disappeared in the sales compensation segment of the market. NetSuite also acquired and merged together OpenAir and QuickArrow in the professional services automation (PSA) market. 

6. Acquisitions/Alliances Accelerate

There were also a number of interesting alliances initiated in 2009. One of the most innovative was Intacct’s partnership with the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants (AICPA)and its subsidiary CPA2Biz who named Intacct as its preferred provider of financial applications. This alliance gives Intacct access to a vast network CPAs who can serve as referral agents. It also gave the SaaS and cloud computing movement an important endorsement among one of the most conservative yet influential professions.

7. Focus On The Channel

The AICPA/Intacct alliance was just one of many new channel arrangements in the SaaS and cloud computing market. A number of SaaS vendors also launched or expanded their VAR programs in 2009. The most newsworthy was Salesforce.com’s new VAR program aimed at broadening the company’s reach beyond its direct sales team.

8. The Google Generation Becomes Mainstream

Google intensified its focus on cultivating a new generation of office workers via its free Google Apps for educators and the government. It is also teaming with Verizon to offer Android-powered cellphones to capture a share of the market and compete against the iPhone tidalwave.

9. Software/Business/Information/Managed Services Convergence

The convergence of software, business and information services has been evolving for a while. The best example of how this process is manifesting itself is Thomson-Reuters’ use of Salesforce.com’s Force.com platform to create and deliver a new wealth management service to its customers. ConnectWise has also emerged as a major proponent for SaaS and cloud computing in the managed services arena to make it easier for IT workers to do their jobs.

10. Obama Policies Promote On-Demand Services

President Obama’s CIO, Vivek Kundra, told the Wall Street Journal in March 2009, “I’m all about the cloud computing notion. I look at my lifestyle, and I want access to information wherever I am. I am killing projects that don’t investigate SaaS first.” In September, Kundra followed through on his promise to foster the use of on-demand services in the federal government by launching a new online marketplace of SaaS applications and cloud computing services, www.apps.gov.

Looks like I did pretty well with my predictions. Of course, I wouldn’t be reviewing them if I knew I had done poorly!

With my past success now behind me, I’ll post my predictions for the new year and decade ahead soon. Stay tuned.

I’ve been suggesting for years that PC vendors could be great channel partners for Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) vendors, and Dell now has an opportunity to prove me right.

Today, Dell and saleforce.com announced that Dell will offer salesforce.com’s SaaS solutions to its small- and mid-size business (SMB) customers via its website.

This is a natural combination. Dell has been a prominent customer of salesforce.com’s on-demand CRM solutions. Salesforce.com uses Dell’s computers in its data centers. This week, the companies’ CEOs will be on stage together at Oracle’s Open World conference.

Selling software to its customers isn’t new for Dell. It has been offering Microsoft Office, Symantec Anti-Virus and other applications for a while. Adding salesforce.com’s on-demand solutions enables Dell to position itself as a fuller, ‘one-stop shop’ for SMBs.

This gives salesforce.com a strong new channel to market and builds on Dell’s core competency as a direct sales company, offsetting some of the challenges which will arise from Dell’s recent decision to acquire Perot Systems.

This is another example of the aggressive efforts SaaS vendors are making to broaden their channels to market and hardware vendors’ efforts to add SaaS to their portfolios, including NetSuite’s previous partnership with HP and Cisco’s acquisition of WebEx.

At the moment, IBM is putting its energies into promoting its LotusLive SaaS capabilities. It will be interesting to see how it responds to these competitive moves and positions itself as a channel to market for third-party SaaS vendors as well.

I was astonished to learn that salesforce.com’s founder and CEO, Marc Benioff, is speaking at next week’s Oracle Open World customer/partner conference.

Although Benioff is an alumnus of Oracle and Oracle’s founder/chairman/CEO Larry Ellison was an initial investor in salesforce.com, there has been no love lost between them publicly because salesforce.com was conceived to compete against Oracle’s Siebel division long before it became a part of Oracle.

Benioff has spent the past decade ridiculing the inefficiencies of on-premise customer relationship management (CRM) software and other legacy enterprise applications, along with traditional hosting models associated with Oracle. Ellison has returned the fire with his own tirades about the impossible economics of the Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) model. And, Ellison’s lieutenants in the Siebel On-Demand division have made increasingly aggressive efforts to undercut the success of salesforce.com over the past year.

Yet, folks I know who are a part of the Oracle inner-circle have said that Benioff and Ellison have been able to maintain a warm personal relationship despite their public saber-rattling. And, Oracle has benefited from the fact that salesforce.com’s has relied heavily on Oracle database solutions since its inception as a key component of its service delivery infrastructure.

I always viewed Ellison’s diatribes against SaaS, and more recent rants about the cloud, as a subterfuge aimed at deflecting attention from this fertile marketplace.

But, Benioff’s appearance at next week’s Oracle Open World conference may represent more than an appeasement against these ideas and political detente between the companies. The title of Benioff’s talk is, “The Best of Both Worlds: Customer Success in the Cloud with Oracle and salesforce.com.”

While Ellison was not a fan of SaaS in public, Oracle has fully embraced the concept of cloud computing from a marketing perspective, especially since announcing its intention to acquire Sun Microsystems.

My guess is that folks in Oracle’s On-Demand Siebel division are pretty upset about Benioff’s Open World appearance because they figure they can also pitch the benefits of the cloud, without inviting a competitor to talk to their current and prospective customers.

The same is probably true for the senior executives and staff at NetSuite, another Oracle spinoff and Ellison SaaS investment, which has always viewed salesforce.com as a sibling rival but hasn’t been invited to the Oracle party even though most industry observers believed it is more closely aligned with Oracle.

Two and a half years ago, I suggested that Oracle would buy salesforce.com in a hostile takeover to derail its success in the SaaS marketplace. Now, I’m beginning to wonder if it may be a friendly acquisition to capitalize on its escalating success.

After I initially speculated that Oracle would make a hostile takeover bid, I suggested that Google would be the white knight who would come to salesforce.com’s rescue because it couldn’t afford to lose this valuable partner and channel to the enterprise market. I’m not sure if Google would make the same move if Oracle initiates a friendly takeover bid.

The bottomline is that Benioff’s appearance at next week’s conference, and the topic of his talk, is another indication that SaaS and cloud computing are becoming more mainstream ideas and more viable methods to increase the effectiveness of enterprise applications and data centers.

Salesforce.com has teamed with Unit 4 Agresso to create a new company, called FinancialForce.com, that will build upon the Coda 2go on-demand financial application.

This move is another indication that CFO receptivity toward SaaS-based accounting, financial management and enterprise resource planning (ERP) applications is rising.

The new joint venture will build on Coda’s original Force.com-based SaaS solution, and the growing momentum in the SaaS accounting and financial management applications market produced by NetSuite , Intacct and others in this area. (Disclosure: I’ve done work with all of these companies.)

This announcement is newsworthy because it is Salesforce.com’s first direct foray into the financial application market and its first joint venture.

There are probably an assortment of marketing and legal reasons why the two companies have formed this joint venture. However, the reality is that  few joint ventures in the tech and software industry have been successful because the partners often have differing priorities or can’t get their business processes to align.

In this case, the two companies are obviously confident they can overcome the shortcomings of typical joint ventures because Salesforce.com has been aggressively promoting Coda as a pioneer user of its Force.com Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) for a while. By making this additional investment, it suggests one of two primary possibilities regarding Coda’s performance:

1. Either Coda is experiencing tremendous growth and Salesforce.com wants a larger part of the ‘action’.
2. Or, Coda is not getting enough traction and requires more capital to successfully compete in the market long-term.

In the same vein, it raises questions about how Coda’s SaaS capabilities fit into the company’s legacy software environment. Was the company experiencing internal tensions trying to balance its SaaS and legacy businesses? Or, is it simply trying to remove any barriers that the legacy business may pose so it can accelerate the growth of its SaaS business?

In either case, this venture is a mixed blessing to existing players in the SaaS financial apps market, software vendors developing SaaS apps on Force.com, and Salesforce.com’s AppExchange partners.

Salesforce.com’s entrance into this market clearly lends greater credibility and visibility to SaaS-based financial applications as a viable alternative to legacy, on-premise software. Its deep pockets and powerful marketing engine should significantly increase the amount of attention aimed at CFOs. This will certainly help all SaaS companies trying to educate CFOs and others in the executive suite about the business benefits of SaaS.

The new initiative will also send shockwaves through Microsoft, Oracle or SAP, who are already facing serious challenges trying to respond to the rapid rise of customer interest in SaaS alternatives.

But, the joint venture will also raise concerns among many SaaS vendors who have been suscipious of Salesforce.com’s ulterior motives for a while. 

The joint venture is an obvious threat to direct competitors in this segment of the market. It also poses questions for other SaaS and traditional software vendors who may have been considering Salesforce.com’s Force.com PaaS.

Why should they build their applications on the Force.com platform if there is a chance that Salesforce.com might eventually compete with them? Especially, since this isn’t an isolated event.

Salesforce.com has made a series of acquisitions in other areas of the software landscape which have encroached on some of its AppExchange partners’ primary businesses, including content, knowledge and services management which have all led to new Salesforce.com offerings.

This move also puts into question Salesforce.com’s impartiality when it comes to its partner relationships and AppExchange marketplace. For instance, if you do a quick search on the AppExchange for accounting or financial applications, FinancialForce.com is at the top of the list based on “Keyword Relevance”, even though other players are ranked higher based on Popularity or Ratings.

I’m not suggesting that Salesforce.com doesn’t have plenty of good reasons to make this move, and it is certainly within its rights to take these actions. However, it will also create more anxieties and provocate more apprehension among current and aspiring SaaS vendors which could harm its existing and potential partner relationships.

This would be unfortunate since it comes at the same time Salesforce.com is trying to expand its partner ‘ecosystem’ and promoting its new VAR program.

Yet, if Salesforce.com helps to raise the visibility and legitimize the value of SaaS in the eyes of CFOs and other executive decision-makers, it will also create more opportunities for other SaaS vendors to capitalize upon. If this occurs, most SaaS vendors will be willing to put up with the potential tradeoffs.

Last year, I predicted that 2009 would be the year of the channel in the Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) market and a growing number of SaaS industry leaders have obliged me by expanding their sales efforts in this direction.

The latest is Salesforce.com which announced today that it is launching a new value-added reseller (VAR) program to encourage third-party companies to build on its Force.com platform and extend the reach of its AppExchange into new market segments.

Salesforce.com’s announcement comes on the heels of NetSuite’s recent enhancements to its VAR program aimed at strengthening its position in the market.

Because of Salesforce.com’s greater prominence in the marketplace, its new initiative is bound to bring even more attention to the rapidly evolving role of channel companies in the SaaS market. In Salesforce.com’s case, there move represents an important milestone in the company’s evolution and that of the SaaS movement as a whole.

Until now, the company has placed all of its sales efforts on selling directly to end-users. Although it was also well-aware of the importance of encouraging third-party developers to build applications that enhanced its core applications via the AppExchange and ultimately the Force.com platform, it readily admitted in the past that it didn’t see much opportunity to build channel partners into its go-to-market strategies. As a result, the company aggressively recruited enterprise salespeople instead to attack the mid- and large-scale enterprise market.

In my view, the following forces have combined to change Salesforce.com’s attitude toward VARs in the SaaS market,

1. Today’s economic environment has made it more difficult to penetrate new accounts. With the cost of sales escalating, SaaS vendors must find more economical ways to win new business instead of relying on high-priced sales executives. (Salesforce.com recently recruited Doug Dennerline from Cisco’s Collaboration/WebEx unit to become its new Executive VP for enterprise sales in the Americas to reinvigorate its direct sales efforts.) 
2. VARs are a natural target for sales expansion. Although customers are fed up with their legacy applications, they are still wedded to their ‘trusted’ suppliers, and are reluctant to move to new products or technologies without the help of their current suppliers. These ‘trusted’ suppliers tend to be their local and/or industry-specific VARs.
3. Enlightened VARs are increasingly recognizing that they must migrate to a SaaS orientation in order to survive and thrive in the future. Traditional VARs have been fearful and resistent to SaaS solutions because they threatened their fundamental value proposition (complexity) and potentially undercut their relationship with the customer (account control). Now, they are willing to explore ways to build SaaS into their business model.  
4. Technological advancements are also facilitating third-party development and delivery of SaaS applications. Today’s Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) offerings, such as Force.com, make it possible for VARs to develop and deliver industry-specific solutions.
5. Maturing SaaS vendors are identifying new revenue-sharing opportunities in the SaaS supply/value-chain that can permit them to enlist VARs, and other channnel partners, without seriously hurting their operating margins.

In addition to these market forces, Salesforce.com’s VAR program is built on its own history of success working with companies, such as Veeva Systems (formerly, Verticals OnDemand), who have been configuring its basic apps into industry-specific solutions for years. I suspect that more companies of this nature will emerge as a result of Salesforce.com’s new program.

At the same time, a new generation of professional services/system integrator is also arising. This new breed is typified by Appirio which not only helps customers build unique apps on top of PaaS offerings, but they also retain the marketing rights to these custom apps so they can be resold via AppExchange and other online outlets. In so doing, these new PS/SI companies are blurring the line of demarcation between their role and that of the traditional VAR.

A case in point is Appirio’s latest professional services automation (PSA) offering, which escalates its growing competition with NetSuite’s PSA suite built on the combined resources of OpenAir and QuickArrow.

All of this adds up to an exciting new dimension of third-party activity surrounding the rapidly evolving SaaS and cloud computing world.

PS: In addition to reporting and consulting on these topics on an ongoing basis, I’m pleased to be participating in the following industry events which will also examine the implications of these trends: Cloud Futures and the SIIA’s OnDemand Conference.

Contact me at info@thinkstrategies.com if you’d like to discuss these trends further or need help addressing these issues.

A combination of work, travel and summertime distractions have prevented me from commenting on a series of small, yet significant announcements and activities over the past couple of weeks in the Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) and cloud computing market.

My latest travels started last week at Pacific Crest’s 11th Annual Technology Leadership Forum in Vail, CO, where I met with a series of the investment firm’s ‘buy-side’ clients as a part of its Mosaic program, and interacted with a variety of cloud computing executives and VCs in a SaaS workshop.

Nearly all of Pacific Crest’s clients are concerned about the financial implications of the cloud computing movement on their large-cap investments in companies such as Microsoft, Oracle and SAP on the software side, and IBM, HP, EMC, Dell and other systems vendors on the hardware side. They are also curious about whether Amazon, Google, Salesforce.com, SuccessFactors and other upstart SaaS/cloud companies can sustain their onslaught against the established players. My response to their inquiries echoed the commentary which I published in E-Commerce Times last month, the SaaS/cloud computing movement is already fundamentally changing the the technology industry but doesn’t necessarily mean the demise of the established players. Those legacy players who can adjust their business models to respond to changing customer demands can survive the industry tranformation.

The discussion during the SaaS workshop at the PacCrest forum also reflected the rapidly changing realities of today’s marketplace. While the CXOs and VCs in attendance during the session confirmed that demand for SaaS and cloud computing solutions is accelerating, they also acknowledged that tightening corporate budgets and growing confusion due to vendor proliferation were combining to make it more difficult to succeed and survive. As a result, PacCrest’s staff and the attendees agreed with my prediction that the SaaS/cloud computing industry will see more company failures and greater M&A activity in the latter half of the 2009 and first half of 2010.

Despite these concerns, customer interest and adoption of SaaS and cloud computing alternatives continues to grow. A reflection of the growing interest was last week’s first Cloud World conference in San Francisco which I had the privilege to chair. The event was co-located with IDG World Expo’s OpenSource World and Next Generation Data Center conference. Despite the event happening in a down economy and dead of August, it attracted approximately 2000 attendees.

I chaired a terrific keynote roundtable session entitled, “Assessing the Real Market Opportunities and Obstacles for Making Cloud Computing Mainstream”,  at the end of the first day of the event which included Joe Weinman of AT&T Business Solutions, Sam Charrington of Appistry, James Urquhart of Cisco Systems and the CNET Blog Network, and Timothy Chou of Ming Holdings. The second morning of the conference, I also had a chance to introduce Lew Tucker, vice president and CTO of cloud computing at Sun Microsystems.

Cloud Bursts: Here are a few other news items which crossed my radar-screen over the past two weeks which are worth noting:

• Coupa Offers Its On-Demand Procurement Solution to the Government for Free. Salesforce.com has had a lot of success giving its on-demand customer relationship management (CRM) solutions to non-profit agencies for free. This altruistic move also produces huge benefits to Salesforce.com because it not only generates good PR and goodwill, but also exposes the members of the board and other volunteers who come from the corporate world to the power of Salesforce.com’s solutions. If Coupa can convince the government to take it up on its offer, it could get a tremendous bounce by exposing corporate contractors and others to its on-demand procurement capabilities.
• Fujitsu Consulting Teams with NetSuite to Offer On-Demand ERP Solutions to Mid-Size Enterprises in Japan. NetSuite’s latest partner deal clearly illustrates how rapidly the SaaS market has evolved. This is not your typical, joint press release agreement. Instead, it specifically states, “The plan calls for 500 new customers within three years.” This bold statement wasn’t necessary to bring attention to the alliance, but proves that SaaS is taking hold in the back-office and gaining acceptance worldwide, even in relatively conservative regions such as Japan.
• i2 Looks to Spur Sales with SaaS. Another indication of the rapid growth of SaaS and the disruption it is causing traditional, legacy application vendors is the recent strategy move by i2 Technologies to add SaaS solutions to its portfolio. Like many legacy software vendors, i2 has seen a significant slowdown in sales and sees SaaS as an essential element in resuscitating its business. The success of Plex Systems and other SaaS vendors in the manufacturing sector has proven that companies in this industry are ready to acquire SaaS alternatives to meet today’s tough challenges.
• Microsoft Acquires Office.com URL. Microsoft continues to take a variety of steps to fortify its defenses against the growing competitive threat of Google Apps and other on-demand office productivity solutions. Grabbing the Office.com URL will certainly strengthen its search engine optimization (SEO) and branding efforts. But, Microsoft still has a long way to go to deliver a coherent message and compelling SaaS/cloud computing solutions.

Yesterday’s announcement that NetSuite is acquiring QuickArrow and merging it with OpenAir is the most recent example of a consolidation process in the Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) industry which I predicted would accelerate at the beginning of the year.

This particular transaction is very similar to Xactly’s acquisition of Centive in January. Rather than combining functional capabilities to create a more robust solution, the companies are combining forces to create greater scale.

In both cases, the transactions eliminate head-to-head competitors who looked too much alike to be able to clearly differentiate themselves from one another. Their similarities made it harder to compete for customers and VC funding, especially in today’s tough economy.

Merging, with the help of NetSuite’s deeper pockets, allows the two companies to focus on new customer acquisition, channel relationships and geographic expansion.

This acquisition is the latest indication that the SaaS market is entering a new stage in which the winners will be those companies that can demonstrate their long-term viability as strategic sources, rather than best-of-breed niche players whose long-term survival is suspect.

Merging QuickArrow and OpenAir with NetSuite’s broader capabilities should make IT and business decision-makers more comfortable doing business with the combined entity. It also prevents QuickArrow from falling into the hands of a NetSuite competitor.

The acquisition also strengthens NetSuite’s hand against Salesforce.com’s growing initiatives in the service automation arena. Earlier this year, Salesforce.com unveiled its Service Cloud offer. It has also supported the professional services automation solution developed by Appirio.

Knowing the principals at both OpenAir and QuickArrow, as well as the executives at NetSuite, I think this is a good ‘outcome’ for all of the parties involved. I also think their mutual customers and channel partners can benefit from this transaction.

I also expect other lookalike SaaS companies in other segments of the industry to experience similar exits in the months to come.

THINKstrategies announced today that OpenAir, Inc. 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 program is the latest initiative by THINKstrategies to bring attention to SaaS and cloud computing companies which are producing tangible business benefits for specific user organizations. These benefits include increased sales, lower costs, higher customer satisfaction, faster operations, and greater profitability.

OpenAir, a NetSuite Inc. company, is a leading provider of SaaS-based services automation software, including professional services automation (PSA) and project portfolio management (PPM) solutions.

Click here to read about how OpenAir’s SaaS solution helped Bluewolf Group and Metricstream better manage their professional service operations so they could achieve their business objectives.

Click here to read more about the BoSS Awards and to nominate a company for an award.