Web hosting provider NaviSite (navisite.com) says its new ISV Sandbox solution, a joint offering with software giant Microsoft (microsoft.com), makes it easier for companies to develop and adopt a cost-effective SaaS offerings.

NaviSite says the ISV Sandbox provides ISVs, and anyone else who has applications that would reach more customers over the Net, with a secure environment for developing and testing the delivery of software applications to end-users over the Internet. For ISVs, assessing the viability of the SaaS model can be expensive, both in terms of cost and time, but the ISV Sandbox offers a ready-made platform for evaluating SaaS and testing SaaS-enabled software.

The new version of the ISV Sandbox, for developers on the Microsoft platform, is built using the Microsoft Solution for Windows-based Hosting for Applications, which is specifically designed to help ISVs shorten their time-to-market for SaaS offerings and to enable service providers to host and manage applications for ISVs.

Mike Mazur, the VP of channel sales and alliances at NaviSite says the ISV Sandbox solution enables partners who are interested in taking themselves, or their customers, into a SaaS environment to do so with a lower cost, which is often a big barrier to entry.

"We've been seeing and doing SaaS for a long time and so many people are scared off by it because really you can't tell what you're actually going to need until you get into it," says Mazur. "Sometimes there's a high infrastructure cost or high development cost and what we're trying to do is remove some of those barriers to entry. So what we?ve done is put together an infrastructure very similar to what you would see in a managed hosting or dedicated hosting environment and an ISV can take a slice of that virtual infrastructure as they develop their application on-demand. Once they're comfortable that its up and running, we can take a snapshot of their application and move it over to a dedicated infrastructure very easily. By that point, they've taken all the guesswork out of it because they know exactly how much RAM, how much hard drive space and how much processor speed is necessary for their offering."

Mazur says NaviSite's ISV Sandbox offering is sold in 90 day increments, and at the end of the contract customers can choose to renew for another 90 days, move into production or in some cases, take it in-house. NaviSite says its ISV Sandbox is also the first product of its kind that has been made commercially available, which it credits to having Microsoft as a partner.

"We talked to Microsoft and heard they were starting to get on board and were going to market saying [SaaS] is the wave of the future," says Mazur. "That's one of the reasons that we've partnered up with Microsoft. They were very excited to get on this and get it launched. We kind of co-developed it with them and they see us as a valuable place for their channel to be able to test out applications and move in the direction they stated at their Worldwide Partner Conference back in August. It was good to hear Steve Ballmer stand up and say 'everything's going to the Web. Everything is going online.' You know it was a perfect validation for us because that's what we?ve been saying for years."

NaviSite recently launched its ISV Sandbox solution at software as a service event SaaSCon in San Francisco, California and says the feedback has been promising.

"The biggest thing is that it used to be a significant investment for people who wanted to jump into something like this, because you weren't quite sure it was going to work out the way you thought. This gives them a sort of lab or test environment with very low risk," says Mazur. "We're absolutely excited about how this empowers and enables our channel partners and I think SaaS is going to become something more and more people are talking about. Coupled with content delivery network, it's really just going to change the way people are accessing information and products and services on the Internet."