Sandhill Group carries a fascinating analysis of what it terms SaaS 2.0 by Bill McNee of Saugatuck Technology. The main thrust of his argument is that in 2006-8 timeframe, he sees SaaS growth spearheaded by SMBs working out what applications are needed to deliver transformational applications that deliver on customer need:
Second, SMBs will lead SaaS 2.0 adoption…Contrary to conventional wisdom at the time, Saugatuck’s previous pay-as-you-go research found that large enterprises would be the most prevalent early SaaS adopters through 2005 – as many have sought to supplement existing enterprise applications, in addition to deploying point solutions. This latest research confirmed this trend, along with highlighting the “tipping point” toward accelerated SMB adoption 2006-2008. Most importantly, SMBs are now embracing SaaS for mission-critical workloads at twice the rate as large enterprises.
I already know that from what I see in adoption figures for NetSuite, Salesforce.com and my client Winweb. I expect to provide a vignette on why take up is occurring at grass roots level in the next couple of days.
In commentary, McNee says:
Rather than SaaS being positioned and sold as a rapid implementation and deployment environment, SaaS 2.0 is much more about the rapid achievement of business objectives. In this sense, it is very clear that SaaS is not about the technology. The nuts and bolts infrastructure and application functionality that make up a solution is becoming much less important, while the business results that can be achieved and “getting the job done” are increasingly paramount.
I’m pretty sure Stefan Topfer, CEO at Winweb would agree. His company’s offering sees accounting as a utility that underpins the business but which of itself is of little intrinsic value other than a necessary means of achieving compliance. Instead, he’s creating an infrastructure to support early stage business. That infrastructure is already rich with integrated services of the type that have recently been seen as stand alone ‘sex and sizzle’ by the likes of TechCrunch, under the general moniker ‘web 2.0 social software.’
I’m not saying Winweb has got it all right. The product roadmap has plenty to keep the developers usefully engaged and there are areas that need more work. A US-centric account naming convention is certainly required.
But positioning itself as an ‘all you can eat’ infrastructure player Winweb is a compelling story. Especially when it’s contextualised in the scenarios predicted by Sandhill Group.
And since RSS has already exposed it, I might as well add that Stefan has launched a Winweb corporate blog site. I’ll be throwing a few things in from time to time – purely aimed at SMEs.
Technorati Tags: blog infliuence, SaaS, Winweb
Comments on this entry are closed.
Get into the conversation