The book, “SaaS Entrepreneur: The Definitive Guide to Success in Your Cloud Application Business,” is packed full of information for entrepreneurs starting a SaaS business, executives converting an ISV business to SaaS and current SaaS providers.
There are a lot of things a company has to do to make the transformation from a hardware-centric model to a more software-oriented one. Here are the core requirements to consider.
Many ISVs have not thought through their go-to-market strategy and modified their internal culture and expectations to compliment a SaaS, recurring-revenue model. It is one thing for Marketing and Sales to recognize the changing competitive conditions that challenge customer acquisition; but if the rest of the organizational processes and revenue model are structured around the legacy business, dependence on SaaS moving forward is fraught with risk and pitfalls. What follows are some of the key issues that traditional, on-premises vendors should examine to successfully migrate their business to the SaaS model.
Having worked at both a start-up SaaS solution provider and enterprise software companies, I'd like to share the following eight keys to enterprise ISV success in the cloud.
Unlike in traditional software where the channel partners had to have some level of technical expertise, with SaaS, that is not the case, significantly expanding the type of company that could fill the role. SaaS vendors need to stop thinking like software companies, and, when it comes to distribution, think more like they are part of a supply chain.