I was fortunate to have been invited to present information to the hosting community at HostingCon 2010. The organizers suggested a panel and I was extremely lucky to have gathered the world’s leading SaaS experts and a successful SaaS company to the panel.. Joining NaviSite was:
Alex Davis - WorkPlace Systems Trina Horner – Microsoft Jeffrey Kaplan – THINKstrategies Lincoln Murphy - Sixteen Ventures Justin Pirie – Mimecast Anders Trolle-Schultz - SaaS-it Consult
My goal with the panel was to highlight the opportunities for hosters to grow their business and capabilities by focusing on ISVs. NaviSite has a significant number of ISVs who trust us to host their applications and data for their customers. NaviSite offers both managed cloud services and managed dedicated hosting services. ISVs appreciate the multiple data centers, dedication to reliability and our deep experience in managing applications as a service.
In my discussions over the years many people have said “oh but Salesforce.com has the market locked up” and “the market is dominated by large players in each horizontal and vertical segment”. These statements are simply not true. There are thousands of ISVs that have not deployed their application or offered their application as a service. In fact, only now are ISVs and their customers moving in greater numbers to deploy in a hosting provider’s data center. The majority of applications in use today are still installed on-premise.
This is where the opportunity lies. Several of the panelists above have significant knowledge and expertise that they offer to ISVs who are moving to SaaS. Whether it is business, pricing or contractual model changes or application and data architectural changes – these consultants and several hosting companies, like NaviSite, can assist ISVs with their SaaS enablement needs.
The panelists relayed some great information about how ISVs see hosters and what hosters can do to make their offerings and services more attractive to ISVs. The CTO of an ISV on the panel, WorkPlace Systems, a workforce management SaaS application, stated “we looked for a hosting provider that could help us close the deal and pass any due diligence tests that our prospects may have from their boardroom.” [Full Disclosure – WorkPlace Systems is a NaviSite customer]
As expected the topic of single and multi-tenant applications was brought up by the panel. While many have their opinions on the “true SaaS” definition, ie. multi-tenant only, others have a more fluid definition. I personally believe that the ISVs know what is best for their business, their customer requirements and I have spoken to many ISVs that have a timeline and fluid approach on the path to SaaS and multi-tenancy.
In the end – the panel all agreed that the opportunity is great and that while we might be at the height of the cloud hype cycle – we are still a long-way from having the majority of applications and workloads being deployed and marketed in a SaaS model.
About William Toll
William Toll, VP, Marketing at Yottaa, Inc., has held Marketing and Product Management positions in the Web hosting and Internet infrastructure industry since the late 1990s. Currently William is driving the marketing strategy and implementation for Yottaa, Inc. Yottaa, The Web Performance Company, provides innovative cloud services enabling its customers to assess, benchmark, monitor and optimize their websites and Web applications for a better user experience and improved ROI. Most recently William was at the leading managed hosting and cloud services provider, NaviSite. At NaviSite, William was responsible for developing and marketing the company's hosted product lines, including managed cloud services, managed hosting, managed business applications and shared and dedicated hosting for SMBs. In past positions at companies such as Affinity Internet, Inc., Intermedia.NET, and NTT/VERIO, William was the driving force in launching and enhancing successful SMB focused services including: Shared Hosting services, Microsoft Exchange and hosting add-on services like Online Marketing and Web Design. William received a BA in Marketing from New England College. William Toll can be found on Twitter: @utollwi
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