The New World of Software+Services

So, here we are in Bellevue, WA. It's the time of year again for the WW Hosting Summit. Our groups annual event where we focus on connecting our great community of hosting partners with the exec's and industry leaders who focus on the Software + Services business.

The focus this year will be on how we can help the hosting business to move up the value chain and how we can get our partners to identify new channels to increase their reach. Sounds interesting? I think it's not just interesting but a huge necessity if we look at what's happening in the hosting business today.

The agenda looks very promising with a mix of MS execs and industry peers both from the analyst community and hosting providers it should provide some great insights to the some 300 hosters that will be joining us over the next 3 days.

Personally I'm keen to enage with the small group of dedicated partners in our SaaS Incubation Center program. Since the launch in 2006 this group has slowly expanded and has helped a significant number of ISVs in the move to a Software as a Service business model, especially on the sales and go-to marketing side of their business. The experience has learned us that a fair share of the ISVs are particularly fighting with the marketing and sales challenges of the new business they enter. Since the event is closed and invite only I will continue to post the highlights and findings from the event over the next couple of days. STAY TUNED!

BTW we officially went WorldWide today with the SaaS Incubation Center program. What started as an idea little over 8 months ago was kicked off in Europe in November and now covers 8 partners, 4 in the US and 4 in Europe. Mary Jo Foley was one of the first today to cover the release;

Microsoft to help other software vendors go the SaaS route by ZDNet's Mary Jo Foley -- While Microsoft is attempting to distance itself from other software-as-a-service (SaaS) players, the Redmond software company is trying to help other software makers move to the SaaS distribution model.

SDDS has popped-up as a new web acronym today. At the Web2.0 conference in San Francisco a start-up by the name of BungeeLabs has launched their service today. They way they put it on their site "The Bungee Connect™ on-demand development environment dramatically increases both developer productivity and application capability by automating Ajax interactivity, reducing web state management programming, and optimizing intelligent integration with multiple web service APIs".

Interesting development. This could be very disruptive to the way business develop code and buy their development tools.... as-a-service?!

Dana Gardner on Fastforward has a great post on their announcement and how this could change the world of developing software. This could become a new service hosters offer their customers, besides the infrastructure, server-kit, storage and SLA's. The code developed IN the hosting environment with all the benefits of shared/collaborative access and resillience. This sure is something to consider when you are a hosting provider looking at diversifying services and moving out from commoditiy dedicated hosting. It's also a great tool to create stickyness on the basic services.

I had a great meeting last week in Amsterdam with Treb Ryan, CEO of US based OpSource. They are one of the pioneer SaaS Enablement providers and Microsoft partner for the SaaS Incubation Center program. Treb and I actually met for the first time earlier last month in Bellevue at the Microsoft Hosting Summit. So coincidentally we found out he was coming to Amsterdam (and I was not travelling)...

We talked about what we both see happening in the space of Software Developers moving to the web for delivery of their applications, what these ISVs need from hosting providers and how programs like SaaS On-Ramp and the Incubation Center program can be further refined to help ISVs move.

What was most interesting is our joined conclusion that there is still a lot of confusion on what SaaS is or what it isn't. SaaS in some peoples view is all about Web delivery of an application. Ray Ozzie gave his view last month in a Knowledge@Wharton interview and outlined a generation-1 (web-based) and a generation-2 (hybrid of software AND services). Then there is the On-Demand angle, driving traditional applications into a 'browser experience'.

All in all we both concluded that this part of the industry is still in some sort of confused state ... we need much clearer descriptions if we want to avoid meaning totally different things speaking about SaaS. Phil Wainewright at ZDnet started a poll to find a better word. He is pitching Webware for a pure browser delivered exprience and I like it. Dave Tebutt asks what's in a name and does it really, really care how we call it?

I believe it does matter how we call it. There are too many different models and trends to be captured by only one term. Webware is clear but only covering the browser delivered app part. Software+Services is clear too, it covers the model where you have some piece of software that lives on the users machine and services that ehance the experience. Pointing back to Ray Ozzie's interview he provides some nice and very different examples. Adobe Flash is software (the browser plug-in that is installed on your machine) and services (the code and content that lives on websites). Xbox is another of his examples, with the hardware and the games being enhanced with the Xbox Live services on the net. With those 2 models (Webware & Software+Services) we already can be a lot more specific in talking about ways a software company goes to market and support the end-users. In the hope we avoid being confused next time we speak...

Well, being busy is no longer an excuse to not post. Too many things happening, all too good not to talk about.

One of them is the succesfull launch of the SaaS Incubation Centers throughout the world.With partners today in Europe covering UK, France, Germany and Netherlands and great partners across the US we have reached a milestone in our strategy to help ISVs in transitioning from a traditional to a services based business model.

The SaaS Incubation Centers provide coaching on critical business succesfactors and addresses the key infrastructure related issues. The 'centers' are 100% run by the hosting partners who have years of experience in managing and operating reliable infrastructures on the Microsoft technology.

We aim this program at those Independend Software Vendors (ISVs) who have already invested in the development of a SaaS based application but need support with identifying partners, getting marketing and sales optimized for a services based business. We worked with our consulting partner Mural Consulting to developed a concept we named Business Development Session or BDS. The BDS is delivered as a 1-day, full day session addressing a mix of marketing, sales and organizational topics. The key discussion topic and a great discussion starter is the 8 Key Success Factor model.

Over the next days I will post more on the contents of the SaaS Incubation Center program as well as the utlimate goal of getting the Telco 2.0 connected to the hosting ecosystem (that should do for a great score in buzzword bingo). So keep an eye out for much, much more.

Bummer, I have not even been able to use it since I have direct flights between Amsterdam and Seattle. Boeing announced yesterday they are phasing out the wireless internet service onboard flights. From Europe SAS (Copenhagen - Seattle) and Lufthansa were operating the service.

According to Boeings announcement the expected take up in the US market did not happen. Boeing had already started shopping the Connexion service earlier this year with no partners stepping up to purchase.

I travel a lot and would appreciate onboard connectivity not just to work but also to be entertained. Inflight movies hardly ever are to my liking.

We'll have to wait for another provider who does have a more integrated business model to see this become available again. Why pay for WIFI seperately while the access fee (30$ per filght) is a minor markup to the ticket fee. This also could provide more opportunities for SaaS / Web2.0 developments - provide people with an app to fill out the visa waivers online, watch personlized on-line entertainment and news, there is so much you can think of that would provide an interesting opportunity specific to people in flight.

Om Malik and Robert Scoble have some more on this topic too.

Now it's all setup and ready to go I have no reasons to hold up posting.

As I'm just back from a very, very nice holiday I will be still somewhat slow on posting this week. But as I'm working on many exiting initiatives to be launched during the next 3 or 4 months, expect the next week to be much more active.

To still give this post some additional 'meat' I did want to take the time make you aware of the official launch this week of the Microsoft Solution for Windows-based Hosting for Applications Version 1.0.

This solution provides Hosting providers and Independend Software Vendors (ISVs) with a platform, tools, best practices and step by step guidance to enable applications on Microsoft Technology for delivery and consumption as a Service. Please check the following link for more details http://www.microsoft.com/serviceproviders/solutions/applicationhosting.mspx