SAAS (Software as a Service), or application which changes according to the demands, becomes increasingly important in enterprises.
1. There is no boundary in software.
The limitation of application to a particular organization will be less and less, and it will be more users oriented. This will enable application be user-centric rather than institution-centric. However, this is beneficial to organization, because it will lead better application.
2. This is a product, fool!
As promoting software service with emphasizing ¡°try first and buy¡±, the product management and product marketing team will be forced to put more concepts of ¡°whole product¡± and ¡°solution sales¡± to the product itself. This product needs to integrate business process into product features.
3. The fist impression will be prior.
The impression of software service application is only a few minutes. The first three minutes is important. That is to say, we should focus on the first three years so that we will not feel exhausted three years later.
4. Calculate carefully and budget strictly.
Product sales budget and gross profit margin are the financial indicators to promote technological strategy. Just as Edwards Deming expected, the capacity to support reliable and scalable service with low cost is the increasing advantage.
5. The first-class technical support is in the ascendant.
Now, the space for the technological consultants who have imagination and with high price to answer questions which have imagination and with high price is less and less. The first-class technical support will assume greater responsibility, the representative companies will answer the difficult questions. Will a good answer work? It is doubtable.
6. Product union.
Software server vendors and other software service vendors provide more resources to integration partners. Now they are talking about this issue, but they are not doing well. This might be the best answer to the freaky sales channels of software service vendors. For the traditional sales channel, software service cannot provide sufficient profits.
7. Rather video than text.
Software service products will start to use more and more video training, technical support, document management, and so on. Watching videos will be cheaper, easier and funnier. The text-based tools are being replaced by audio/video.
8. Software service used for software service.
Software service companies will start to outsource more businesses out. This is important, because they can get profits from the service provided by complete service mandatory providers to clients. These types of arrangements will enable the natural software service application change into end-to-end cooperation.
9. The confusion of gridding calculation.
The public calculation is still an open issue, and the cost of providing this service will promote the development of public calculation. In some cases, you can lower the monthly costs of each user to the level which gridding calculation cannot provide any profit. In other cases, it many provide cost advantage which is good value for money. In these two cases, software vendors will create ¡°compatible-calculation¡± application, so that the manufacturers can make use of network computing while harvesting good risk/reward ratio.
10. The technology is placed in a secondary position.
The technical obstacle of promoting software service into market is much less than we started to research software services in 1999. Now, the emphases are turning more to marketing strategy. Although technology is important, it has been in a secondary position.
