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Vid ett par tillfällen har jag varit och lyssnat på samt träffat Anders Trolle-Schultz, grundare och VD av SaaS-it Consult. Vid varje tillfälle har jag insett hur bra TeleComputing ligger i tiden och vilka möjligheter vi har att fortsätta att utvecklas och leverera IT-tjänster.
Anders Trolle-Schultz har skrivit en intressant artikel om SaaS och hosted services, vilket ger en bra inblick i hur en IT-leverantör kan se framtiden an. Jag vågar lova att det inte bara är IT-leverantörer inom outsourcing och IT-leverantörer allmänt som sneglar denna väg…här kommer många spelare äntra spelplanen i framtiden.
Vi har med Anders tillstånd saxat delar ur hans artikel ’Software as a Service: it’s about the business model, stupid’ och som knyter an på artikeln ’Ordning och reda’ i TeleComputings förra nyhetsbrev: Vår vision är att det ska vara enkelt för kunden att köpa IT-drift och tjänster från TeleComputing. Du ska kunna plocka tjänsterna från ”hyllan” och genom tydligt innehåll och smart paketering sätta samman dem till en leverans som passar just dig.
’Software as a Service: it’s about the business model, stupid’:
”At SaaS-IT, we firmly believe that the emerging hosted services distribution channel will be broadly analogous to the distribution models found in established retail supermarket businesses. This model is highly attractive due to an ever-increasing number of small to mid-size (SMB) customers who want to reap the benefits of enterprise-class software without being burdened by their associated hardware, software, and maintenance costs.
Instead of necessarily licensing software and running it on-premise, the software can be hosted as a service if appropriate. Companies “rent” these services from hosting resellers for a monthly per-user fee.
This new model offers huge market potential for resellers of hosted services. To continue with the supermarket analogy, it is the technology and software vendors (the “farmer”) who deliver the production elements (“raw milk”) to hosting service providers (white label service providers), who in turn build services (“cheese) and also act as wholesalers to distribute the “cheese” for SMB customers to use in their businesses. Resellers provide the “supermarket” where their customers can choose among the array of services (“cheeses”) that the reseller offers. The only difference is that hosted services don’t have to be physically delivered through the reseller, whereas cheese must be delivered to the supermarket. The end customer’s perception is the same in either case: the reseller provides both cheese and hosted services.
Copyright © 2008 by SaaS-IT Consult Ltd., United Kingdom. All rights reserved
Of course, delivering hosted services is far more complex than selling cheese, but the successful distribution of hosted services needs more than a “wholesale distributor” (the hosting service provider or white label service provider); it needs a supermarket to make all the service offerings available to customers, packaged and priced just the way that works best for the reseller’s shoppers. The role of the reseller as trusted advisor to the end customer should thus make them one of the key players in this new hosted services distribution model. As René Speelman, a project leader at Sogeti Group, a $1.5 billion division of Cap Gemini says in relation to SaaS: "It's all about trusting the partner you're working with." And as the trusted advisor to their customers, resellers need to help them understand the benefits of the new SaaS model and how combining SaaS with on-premise systems can improve running their business and reduce costs. By helping customers see the benefits of hosted services, resellers should be able to ensure their share of the growing SaaS market.”
Det förtroende TeleComputing får från våra kunder är enormt och vi måste vara tydliga och tryggt beskriva vår leverans för att möta våra kunders behov att möta framtidens utmaningar.
Anders Trolle-Schultz fortsätter i ’Software as a Service: it’s about the business model, stupid’ med:
”However, it will require a change of mindset. There is much to learn from other industries. Major Fast Moving Consumer Goods (FMCG) businesses such as Coca-Cola have long recognized the importance of a stable, streamlined sales and distribution system to bring their products from factory to consumer with a variety of channel players, each accepting and getting paid for their value-added role in the system. In a similar way, success in SaaS will not be about trying to play every role in the chain, but on focusing on developing a uniquely differentiated value added part in the overall ecosystem. At the end of the day, the genie is out of the bottle and the customer is king once more.”
TeleComputing fortsätter att utveckla sin leverans baserad på egenproducerade tjänster som kombineras med tjänster från SaaS- och cloudleverantörer – koordinatorrollen är nyckeln i framtidens outsourcingleverans.
Läs mer om Anders Trolle-Schultz och SaaS-it Consult på www.saas-it.net. Där kan ni även beställa den kompletta artikeln ’Software as a Service: it’s about the business model, stupid’.
Max Büchler, Chef Product Management
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