Monday, December 12, 2005

Pioneering Software as a Service

When I initiated the development for a first "software service" based application in 1997 using ColdFusion 1.5, I had no idea of the development of this industry. It was just ment to interact with our 4,000 resellers in 20 countries and client/server software was obviously not the right way to go.

In 2001 I founded BlueRoads, one of the early Software as a Service companies and the first with an enterprise class architecture in mind. The company experienced great success, grew in market awareness, customerbase and usage. Many other Software as a Service companies where founded in the meantime. I watch over 200 today.

Now - I'm working with some very interesting people (also SaaS pioneers) on a next generation Software as a Service solution and will continue to help this new business to grow fast.

Thursday, December 08, 2005

Development requires change

Change is probably the only constant in our universe. I truly enjoyed my 4 years at BR and especially the personal relationships I developed. Now I decided this is a good time for me to transition to the next phase of my life. I look forward to seeing BR achieve great success!

With Software as a Service gaining great momentum, our industry is changing radically. As Microsoft is joining the market with Dynamics CRM 3.0, the SaaS World will not only develop further but that development will accelerate. The top 6 SaaS CRM Players today in accordance to Forrester Research: Salesforce.com, Siebel CRM OnDemand, RightNow, BlueRoads, NetSuite and Salesnet are leading the trend.

As one of the pioneers of the SaaS industry I see the biggest change not because of the new technology or delivery model, but the explosive usage. While CRM was an elite software for the Fortune 5,000 now 10 Million US or 65 Million world wide business can afford to better manage their customers. ERP is no longer a solution for the Fortune 500 but 10 Million world wide producers of any goods. Software as a Service will bring more change to our industry than PC software did when IBM and Microsoft introduced their solutions in 1982 and disrupted the Mini and Mainframe world. Roughly a billion PCs will use Software as a Service in the next 10 years one way or the other, partly or solely. This development requires massive change in the way we think about software.