2008 SaaS Service Provider Survey

Our last SaaS Service Provider Survey yielded excellent responses. We received great feedback and very specific requests on the types of applications that are important to offer as SaaS. It’s about time for another Survey. We expect to send the Parallels 2008 SaaS Service Provider Survey out around mid-September. The Call for Response Notice should be in the September edition of the Parallels Service Provider Newsletter. If so, we would expect to close the Survey on September 30.

The 2007 feedback was very helpful in getting additional visibility into what you need. A substantial amount of the responses requested help for applications such as Exchange, Sharepoint, VoIP, Dynamics CRM, SugarCRM, rich e-mail, and collaboration applications like Open-Xchange. Well, we responded and now it’s time to gather what’s on your mind for the rest of 2008 and into 2009. We believe that web copy would be good, i.e. template messaging for APS, etc. that you could place on your website. Another example would be SaaS messaging to customers that can be modified to suit your needs and/or customer base. Well, fill out that Survey and let us know what you need. We appreciate the response.

BTW
Winners from last SaaS Survey: our congratulations to the winners of the random drawing for 3 iPods;

a) Paulo Cardoso, CiberConceito, Lda, Matosinhos, Portugal,
b) Paul Philbeck, Wild Dial Internet Services, Marion, N.C. USA, and
c) Jose Carranza, NIKAMCORP SAC, Lima, Peru.

New Webcast for PBA and futures

Our Automation Product Team is presenting an August 27th Webcast titled:

"Why hundreds of Service Providers have switched from in-house billing systems to Parallels Business Automation"

If you have your own in-house billing system and are looking for more efficiencies, not to mention new capabilities, you may want to check it out. To register, simply head over to http://www.parallels.com/en/webcasts/ and register.

The way we think about it is: your dedicated resources can be better put to use on money making activities. Parallels has spent hundreds of man-years on building Business Automation into a world class billing and business system. Seriously, you would have to spend many research and development resources and continued maintenance dollars to approach this capability - you don’t develop your own in-house accounting system - so why develop your billing? Instead, use your resources and time to focus on revenue generating activities and new services for your customers. Check out the webcast!

Also, speaking of items in the future. In the coming weeks and months you'll be seeing some info on upcoming SaaS Surveys, notes about a new SaaS Module for Parallels Automation and hopefully by end of next week, a heads up on APS marketing logo and text to place on your website.

HostingCon Wrap-up

Thanks to all that stopped by to say hello last week at HostingCon in Chicago! We enjoyed meeting and talking with Providers, ISVs, Analysts and the Press. It was a busy few days with particular attention, of course, paid to the concept of “Cloud Computing,” as discussed in the keynote speech Serguei Beloussov, our CEO, delivered on Monday. 

In his address, Serguei proposed the future of Cloud Computing will exist in 5 manifestations:
1) Google, 2) Yahoo, 3) Others like IBM/Apple/Adobe, etc. 4) In-House large Cos and 5) Channel Clouds of Service Providers.

In his address, Serguei noted that the current environment or industry landscape looks like this:
1) Google is “changing the world”
2) Microsoft is addressing Google
3) Every other giant IT company must react
4) “When forest is cut, woodchips will fly”, i.e. Every time paradigm shift happened – the channel and ecosystem reshuffled
5) IT is moving off the premise: Threat and Opportunity

So given this enviroment, what can Service Providers do?  Actually, there are two main actions for Service Provider to take; Stay Competitive and Differentiate!

Here are the Key Points.
1. Stay Competitive – do not lose customers
Pricing
Service Levels: Full Automation and Self Management
Critical Service Offerings
Host/own your customers and partners data

2. Differentiate – new customers and revenues
Broader Set Service Plans
--Broader set of services
--Many types and kinds of applications -
-Virtual & dedicated Servers (customer chooses)
Better & flexible upgrade path
--Variety of workloads and sizing options
Stay close with your customers and partners
--Example: Share customer ownership with partners
--Choose between competition and cooperation

Parallels SaaS Updates

We’ve had a big push in SaaS the first half of this year, so much that our blog entries are way behind. As a start to bringing everyone up to speed, we have revamped our Software-as-a-Service www.parallels.com/saas website to better reflect our building ecosystem. It’s now split into two; Service Provider and ISV sections. Download our SaaS Presentations (available on the SaaS site) from our Parallels Summit if you didn’t get a chance to attend. The presentations provide a good perspective on what’s happening and the SaaS opportunity for your recurring revenue stream. Check it out! 

Also, speaking of Service Providers …..we would like to welcome Media Temple, InfoQuest, Dotster and Interspire to the APS Standard (www.APSstandard.com) Provider list. They join 1&1 and Cohaesio in offering applications that are packaged in the APS format for seamless integration with our control panels. Their customers will now have a better selection of application categories to choose from to run their businesses.