a la 360 by Gadi Shamia

Last week I wrote the first part of the Is SaaS for me post. It talked about two important distinctions of the SaaS model: It changes the power play between the customer and the vendor and assures that the vendors work for the customers every day. This part will cover some more distinctions like simplicity, security and maintenance. Read more »

People write a lot about SaaS and focus on the famous “no-software” phrase that Marc Benioff coined. What many people fail to discuss is that the SaaS model, even if one ignores the products themselves, brings real value to customers and puts them in the driver’s seat for the first time. So for once, let’s not talk about technology or delivery mechanisms, but rather focus on the change in the most basic rules of the game that the SaaS revolution is creating, with or without a planning hand from the SaaS companies side. Most of this change is affecting my favorite segment, the Small and medium businesses (SMBs), so let’s talk about how SaaS impacts the way SMBs treat IT. Read more »

There is no doubt that SaaS and on demand are here to stay: if five years ago on demand solutions looked like an Internet version of the mainframe days (strong central server, no logic in the terminal, bad user interface… sound familiar?), the SaaS applications of today look appealing and offer a good alternative to the on premise world.

Continuing with the “seven things about Saas” Theme, which started with Seven reasons why SaaS is not main street in SMB and continued with Seven reasons why SaaS will be a great success, I would like to turn to the vendors now and offer some do’s and don’ts for the industry… Read more »

There is a new SaaS—“Something as a Service” every month. First came the term SaaS—Software as a Service. Marc Benioff coined PaaS—Platform as a Service. Amazon came along with HaaS- hardware as a Service, and Zoli brought the latest one: CaaS—Car as a Service, in response to Shai Agassi’s launch of better place project.

If we learn from history, almost every service started as a product one owned and maintained, which turned into a service over time. Adam and Eve were the first known couple, but shortly thereafter, the first prostitute emerged, offering the real first SaaS: “Spouse as a Service.” Banks are no more than fancy language for VaaS: Vaults as a Service. With urbanization, people started moving from villages to big cities, only to meet the DaaS concept: “Dwelling as a Service,” a huge industry (house and apartment rentals) until these very days. Read more »

It was the week of Web 2.0, the annual conference that celebrates the new new new web. Tracking the news from the conference, it was clear that the new web still mainly targets consumers and individuals, and did not make any significant headway into the small- and mid-size business space (SMB). A quick scan of the tech news this week (all thanks to good old techcrunch) reveals that the industry is focused on photo editing, Internet TV, and web 2.0 mashups for your car. Even applications that are more business-oriented, like InterviewUp, are focused on the individuals (interviewees) and not on the interviewers. Read more »