Market Coverage | Software as a Service Media Expertise

Software as a Service (SaaS) business systems achieve accelerated implementations, faster time to benefit, seamless upgrades, on-demand scalability, cost savings and IT simplicity in powerful ways that traditional on-premise business systems cannot match.

Software as a Service solutions permit subscribers to rent access to business applications and other software systems, pay for the business systems with a per user or utility based subscription fee, outsource the IT administration and maintenance, and provide staff system access from any location at any time. While on-demand Customer Relationship Management (CRM) systems were the first to gain early global market share, other hosted and web-based business systems such as Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP), accounting systems, Human Resources (HR) and payroll systems are following the same trail blazed by the CRM pioneers.

Vantive Media staff have been among the SaaS pioneers, evangelists and thought leaders since the turn of the century. With deep experience and passionate participation, Vantive is uniquely suited to provide lead generation, marketing campaigns, media relations and social media promotion for hosted accounting software solutions, on-demand crm software systems, web-based ERP applications, utility based infrastructure solutions and the many extensible solutions which leverage the Internet as a delivery platform.

While the definition of SaaS varies, linking IT supplier solutions to the core tenants of the SaaS value proposition provides a powerful promotional platform. The Software as a Service value proposition replaces the capital expenditure, staffing and IT equipment barriers associated with conventional licensed or shrink wrapped software solutions. Compared to licensed software solutions where the required implementation, continued staffing and quickly depreciating equipment generally cost 2 to 5 times the application software investment, the SaaS model's subscription pricing and hosted delivery provide a superior offering to many organizations for a fraction of the total cost of ownership.

Cloud Computing

According to analyst firm Gartner, cloud computing is defined as "a style of computing whose massively scalable and elastic, IT related capabilities are delivered 'as a service' to external customers using Internet technologies." Others reference cloud computing more simply as a style of computing in which dynamically scalable and often virtualized resources are provided as a service over the Internet. While Amazon.com and Google are two frequently cited cloud suppliers, start-ups are emerging with increased frequency and in enviable position to carve out their market niches with virtually limitless upside.

Cloud computing and SaaS are unique but overlapping. Amazon's Elastic Computer Cloud (EC2) cloud computing offering permits customers to take advantage of its IT infrastructure, its impressive scalability and its IT expertise so that customers only pay for the processing and storage resources they actually use. This type of infrastructure in the cloud is the most basic level of cloud computing.

The next level up is cloud computing as a Web development platform. For example, the Google App Engine is a virtual location where Web developers can upload code and let Google's platform perform the storage, processing and user delivery.

A third level is running enterprise software applications in a cloud. A IT provider hosts an enterprise software program and assumes IT management for such functions as uptime, performance, information security, backup, disaster recovery and business continuity. These functions are generally accompanied with a service level agreement (SLA). Gartner forecasts that e-mail will become one of the first enterprise business applications that are migrated to the cloud in mass.

Software as a service (SaaS) business applications are generally delivered from a specific software vendor such as Salesforce.com. These SaaS solutions are normally manufactured by the vendor, often deployed in a multi-tenant hosting environment and accompanied with a wide range of professional services and SLA support.

Emerging technologies such as SaaS and cloud computing have empowered a new generation of business software companies to challenge industry norms and carve out their niche in the overall application software market. To succeed, business software suppliers need to speak not only to their products’ differentiations but also communicate their role in transforming the very evolution of software computing. Winning media strategies can be most maximized by linking the benefits and recognizing the differences among cloud computing and SaaS solutions.