Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) is one of the fastest growing segments of the IT industry today. SaaS refers to enterprise applications that are hosted by a third party and accessed via the Web for a subscription fee. Gartner projects the current SaaS market at $6.3 billion (6 percent of the software market) and projects growth to $19.6 billion (25 percent of new software market) by 2011. Other analysts think that these numbers may prove to be conservative and that higher demand will be driven by customers looking to shift from the traditional and expensive cycle of buying software licenses, paying for service contracts and then having to buy upgrades. The ease of use, streamlined maintenance and support, limited capital investment and rapid implementation cycles will further drive SaaS adoption.

read more...

On the Path to Cloud Nirvana
Billy Marshall, Founder and CEO, rPath

The traditional software model is on the verge of a massive transformation. The value of software as a service (SaaS) demands attention from all independent software vendors (ISVs), but the multi-tenant, hosted architecture presents enormous technical challenges. Cloud computing offers a variable cost approach to delivering applications on-demand, relieving ISVs of the expensive burden of building out a high quality custom infrastructure. And virtual appliances are the new application architecture for delivering applications to customers on-premise (via the hypervisor) or on-demand (via cloud computing).

read more...

Measuring the Value of "Free" Applications: The Evolution from Free to Fee
Patrick Moran, Sr. Director Marketing, Cisco WebEx

Technology users are in the midst of a revolution, in which the movement to provide "free" software will drive the adoption of an entirely new set of productivity and business tools.

Free software comes in many flavors, from open source software, to freeware, to free "betas" of software and Internet service, to free Web-hosted applications. When it comes to technology software and services, it has become apparent: the price of some applications is fluid. The dynamic of "free" continues to change and will continue to do so as technology evolves and economies of scale influence pricing. The bottom line is: what is free today may be worth paying for tomorrow.

read more...

Why Software Business Leaders are Failing…and What You can do to Correct this Hazardous Trend
Michael P. Laddin, President, LeaderPoint

US software business leaders are facing economic and competitive challenges that they have never faced before. They have an increasingly urgent need to be leaner and more efficient, seek and seize new opportunities, and build managerial bench strength. And they must do all these things despite substantial obstacles in an economic environment that is becoming more and more limiting.

read more...

Running for the Exit: What Investors Want to See in Exit Planning
Mark Jensen, Managing Partner and National Director,
Venture Capital Services, Deloitte & Touche LLP

If you're a software entrepreneur taking the temperature of the IPO market right now, chances are you're tempted to want to strike a match or two in the hope that things will heat up more than a little.

Yes, the sizzle is gone. For now. But, try to keep a cool head. You'll find that your best strategy is really to stay calm, manage everyone's expectations, including your own, and build a company with a long-term sustainable competitive advantage.

read more...

The Agile Desktop
Francis Carden, CEO
Joe McGonnell, SVP of Marketing
OpenSpan, Inc.

Three of the hottest IT trends over the past couple of years have been SOA, BPM and virtualization. Each shows tremendous promise for delivering real measurable impact to an enterprise's bottom line. But each also comes with a set of challenges for the ultimate consumers of these technologies, business users. Just as telecommunications and cable companies were forced to address the "last mile" of connectivity into users' homes; so too must we address the "last mile" for SOA, BPM and virtualization. How these technologies impact, positively or negatively, user's desktops and their ability to perform their jobs will ultimately determine the success of these technologies. The purpose of this article is to introduce some of these challenges that you may not have yet considered, suggest a possible solution and outline the interaction between desktops and these technologies actually creates new opportunities to create the agile desktop.