Webhosting Day, as you are possibly aware, ended last week. But the thoughts continue. Particularly those that have yet to be written and published.
One of the most impactful presentations of the first day of the deceptively two-day event was the keynote by Serguei Beloussov, SWsoft’s CEO. I tend to watch presentations by Serguei, and a few others in positions similar to his, with one eye on the content of the presentation, and one eye on the context. I find that considering, alongside the message, what the motivation behind that particular message might be can lead to interesting revelations about the business. Or somtimes more questions.
The Content:
In this case, it was right in the title: “Hosting 2010 – OPEN FUSION as a Platform for the Success of Hosting Businesses.” Like quite a few of the presentations at Webhosting Day, the keynote was more than a little bit of a sales pitch for SWsoft’s Open Fusion (arguably enough to make it worth watching for the hosts in attendance. That’s not really my point).
The basic premise was that by the year 2010, SaaS isn’t going to be a choice that software vendors or hosting providers make, or a philosophy into which they buy. It will just be the way things are. Delivering hosted applications will simply be the job of a host. Certainly not an outrageous claim, in my opinion.
In SWsoft’s world, application hosting is made profitable venture by automating, virtualizing and standardizing the infrastructure behind those applications. And, of course, SWsoft happens to have some solutions for automation and virtualization, and a platform for standardization, that you might want to look into.
The Context:
Making the case for SaaS is an obvious objective for SWsoft. Its products are designed with the delivery of hosted applications in mind. And a host could certainly do worse than to build its platform for application hosting out of SWsoft parts.
One thing I found very interesting was the fact that SWsoft (along with Microsoft and several other presenters) was so determinedly evangelizing SaaS.
The people who sell hosts their infrastructure, and the people who invest in the business, and the analysts who advise those people who invest, have been sold on SaaS for a while. And given the amount of material I see coming from that direction, I’ve become convinced, in particular, of the enthusiasm for the hosted application delivery model around the Web hosting business.
But SWsoft’s presentation would seem to indicate that the enthusiasm isn’t all the way there among the Web hosts themselves, at least in SWsoft’s opinion. Could it be that I’ve heard the SaaS sales pitch enough times that I’ve begun to assume there’s a level of acceptance that isn’t quite there?
During the question and answer period, Serguei asked the audience (of roughly 50 people) how many of them were currently offering hosted Microsoft Exchange (which I perceive to be the sort of default entry-point for offering hosted applications), and one person put up his hand.
Is this a discrepancy between American and European markets? Maybe not. It seems like a similar amount of SaaS evangelizing takes place in North America.
So how far are we from hosting providers in general getting excited about SaaS, and building application hosting into the services they provide?
