SWsoft Global Hosting Partner Summit - Show Notes

Hosting software provider SWsoft began its Global Hosting Partner Summit today, May 8, kicking things off with an introductory keynote presentation by CEO Serguei Beloussov.

In a continuation, and reiteration, of a message I've seen delivered at recent industry events, Beloussov expressed his feeling that the immediate future of the hosting market is tied to the software as a service delivery model.

In fact, he said, SWsoft is so committed to the SaaS model that the subject will dominate the content of the event of which we are currently in attendance.

Rather than repeat a point I've communicated here, and elsewhere, I'll boil the SWsoft SaaS message down to a few sentences:

The company believes it is the main opportunity for hosting providers to grow their revenue. By 2011 (according to a familiar looking PowerPoint slide), SWsoft believes that Web hosting providers will have to have built in support for SaaS.

SWsoft is developing for SaaS. And the model is relevant to almost every aspect of the company's platform. Automation and virtualization, in particular, have specific relevance to the model.

Web hosts, says Beloussov, are "the ideal channel" for SaaS.

He made a very interesting point while discussing the big players - Google and Microsoft - inescapable when discussing the hosted application market:

As far as the popular media is concerned, he says, Microsoft is regularly portrayed as an "evil" company (a notion that may have mostly to do with the years-old open source debate and operating system monopoly/fair-play concerns), while Google is regularly portrayed as a "good" company (probably the result of some good decisions and a genuinely conscientious corporate culture).

But with regard to the service provider market in general, and the SaaS market in particular, the reality is actually the opposite of this popularly held perception. Google, he says, is jealous about its businesses. It doesn't want anybody else making money in the markets it chooses to pursue. Microsoft's business is built around partners - when Microsoft's partners (hosting providers) make money, Microsoft makes money.

MORE: Keep checking back for more presentations by SWsoft, as well as notes from Microsoft, IDC and others. And there may be something worth reporting from tonight's event at the "ESPN Zone"

ALSO: Check back shortly for a fabulous photographic update to this post (UPDATE - PICTURES ADDED).

TAGS: swsoft, SaaS