Succeeding with a Hybrid Strategy

Offering both on-premise and on-demand software allows vendors to offer maximum flexibility to customers

By Bob Warfield, Callidus Software

On demand is like religion these days. Many vendors are so focused on proselytizing the model that they neglect to sell their application.

The reality is that on-demand isn’t for everyone. There are financial, security and business considerations that keep many enterprises from leveraging the advantages that a software-as-a-service (SaaS) or an on-demand model can offer.

And while an on-premise, license-based model can seem old-fashioned to those who have joined the on-demand faith, the pay-once, in-house method offers business value and comfort to many CIOs.

What is the right strategy? Go hybrid. That’s the conclusion many established software vendors are coming to. Offering both on-premise and on-demand solutions enables vendors to best meet the immediate and long-term business needs of their customers - and avoids the religious fervor that can sidetrack many sales efforts.

Motorola CEO Ed Zander to Keynote at Software 2007

Ed Zander has joined the list of technology heavyweights who will address the software industry elite at Software 2007. Other keynote speakers will include Microsoft’s Steve Balmer, Salesforce.com’s Marc Benioff, EMC’s David DeWalt, and a group of top enterprise CIOs. Be one of the 2,000 software CEOs, VPs, investors and analysts to take part in Software 2007, May 8 and 9 in Santa Clara, Calif. Four executives from your company can attend this industry-shaping conference for $1,495 – but this discount rate expires Jan. 31. Visit www.software2007.com to find out more and register today!

In Pursuit of the Portable App

Developed by IBM, the Eclipse Foundation and NASA, Eclipse RCP (Rich Client Project) may liberate application user interfaces in the way that HTML did for the Web. Guy Smith of Silicon Strategies Marketing explains how adopting Eclipse RCP can expand software vendors’ markets in this week’s post to the SandHill.com Blog on emerging technologies.

Selling to the Executive Suite

When selling to a new customer, many software companies have trouble getting to the top brass to pitch their solutions. Jeff Thull of Prime Resource Group lists seven challenges to breaking into the top – and how to overcome them in this week’s post to the SandHill.com Blog on software sales best practices.

Prepare for a Tumultuous Year

Now that most of the 2007 prognostications have been published, Erik Keller of Wapiti LLC separates fact from fluff in this weekís post to his SandHill.com Blog, The Software Critic.

Publish Your Perspective!

The SandHill.com Blog wants your opinions. Send your thoughts on the enterprise software industry to editor@sandhill.com and we’ll publish them in our blog.

OpSource SaaS Summit Coming in March

Join 300 executives, analysts and investors to exchange ideas, share opportunities and network at the OpSource SaaS Summit 2007, March 14 to 16, 2007. The conference will focus on “Making Business Web2.0 Work.” Find out more about the event and register by Feb. 18 to save $100.

By the Numbers

Tech bellwethers announce a mixed bag of results; plus, TCS bats a billion, an IBM Fellow defects, Citigroup & Goldman buy in India and HP reorganizes. Read about the software industry developments in the latest SandHill.com Software News Summary.

DONíT MISS: The Biggest Barrier to Growth in India & China

Reducing government interference in the financial sector and strengthening its market orientation are essential to make it allocate capital efficiently and meet the needs of savers. Addressing these deficiencies will increase GDP in China and India by tens of millions of dollars. Read more about this barrier and how to reduce it in this article from The McKinsey Quarterly.

Poll: The Future of SCO?

Last week, the SCO Group reported a drop in fourth-quarter revenue. What will happen to the litigious open source provider?
Take our Pulse Poll >>

Last week, readers gave their opinions on whether Vista’s 2007 sales will meet expectations. What do you think?
Give us your opinion and see the results >>

More at SandHill.com:

Two Linux groups band together to make the Linux Foundation.
Read the most important enterprise software industry news of the week >>

Workshare receives $23 million.
Monitor the latest software venture capital deals >>

Cognos buys Celequest.
Size up last week's software M&A deals >>

Zend Technologies names Harold Goldberg CEO.
See who's made it to the top in our list of recent software executive appointments >>

Send us your feedback on this newsletter and the SandHill.com site.

Parting Thought

“It's easy to come up with new ideas; the hard part is letting go of what worked for you two years ago, but will soon be out of date.”
–Roger von Oech

Courtesy of Malcolm Kusher, The Kushner Group