Disrupting SaaS

by Jeff Garon
published on: 07/10/08 1:36:40 PM

Much has been written in the financial community in recent months about the disruptive nature of the Software as a Service model (SaaS) to traditional enterprise software and the strong and certain trend of SaaS as the prevailing software model of the future. And it makes sense.

The market drivers of this model are numerous. For consumers, these include the pervasiveness of the Internet and Internet-connected devices, reduced upfront capital investment in software solutions, more rapid deployment of applications and reduced in-house IT requirements for maintenance, updating and back-up. It is also a model that makes sense for the provider because the reliability of the Internet makes it possible to cost effectively reach a far broader market, including the vastly underserved small-medium business segment.

"To a large extent, the on-demand model has been highly visible in opening up the small to mid-sized business (SMB) space to the value of software applications that previously were only targeted primarily at enterprise customers."

- Canaccord Adams, May 2008

In its April 2008 update on the SaaS market, William Blair & Co. reported that 27 public companies now exist in this space, up from only 8 in 2000, and many more private companies than ever before. Having been founded in 1999 and a newly public company ourselves, we are encouraged, even overjoyed, by this growth. We believe that the concept of software on demand has reached mainstream acceptance in the business community and that, over the next several years, we will see the practice of buying a software application online, populating it with data that can be shared across multiple applications and accessing that data from any location will become mainstream, too.

But let's be clear — SaaS companies are not all created equal. Many of the companies we see today that are offering software applications via the Web are companies that have evolved or are evolving from traditional enterprise software distribution models. This is not an easy change to make. For some, they may never be able to evolve their technology or business models enough to give a business consumer true freedom and flexibility to build the suite of applications that best fits its needs.

But that’s not us. At Etelos, our business is built around one goal: to revolutionize the way Web-based business solutions are developed, distributed and consumed in order to empower organizations to use Web-based applications to achieve their goals. We offer the "MAP" to this goal by offering 3 core elements "as a Service": the Etelos Marketplace™, Applications from a wide range of developers, and the Etelos™ Platform for managing billing, distribution and licensing.

In the Etelos Marketplace, businesses can assemble suites of Applications from different developers, upload and share data across those Applications, and access their data anywhere, even when offline. The Etelos Marketplace is the place where developers can distribute a broad range of Open Standards-based Applications and where Etelos provides the environment for hosting and other features to offer and monetize these Applications. It is also where customers select and subscribe to an accessible, affordable, portable, scalable and secure range of solutions to their specific needs.

Applications built on our platform, as well as those available through our partners, such as BT, Google and others, are offered to consumers through our Etelos Marketplace. This Marketplace is an advanced environment for applications and provides a highly secure environment for data so that any data stored in any application is accessible, portable and secure.

The Etelos Platform, and the Etelos Marketplace it powers, empowers developers to market, distribute, host, monetize and support their applications built using any of a number of popular development languages and tool sets. We are passionate proponents of an Open Standards-based design environment because we believe that not only is it the future of software development, but also that it fosters and encourages the development of the most innovative applications.

Through our platform, businesses can put together suites of applications from different vendors, upload their data once, share it across all of their applications and access it from anywhere — even when they are offline. This is accomplished through the unique Etelos Marketplace as a Service, Applications as a Service and Platform as a Service model employed here at Etelos.

It's really about flexibility. We believe that as much change as we have seen in the software space in the last 10 years, it may pale in comparison to what we will see in the next 2-5. The office of the future will be increasingly virtual and the necessity to access and share data across applications and across the world quickly and securely will drive the industry to support business consumers on their terms, rather than on the restrictive platforms of legacy providers.

We're ready for that. Are you?