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SaaS: The Rise of Infrastructure Providers
In many ways on-Demand hosted software isn’t that much different from the previous generation of traditional on-site software. The main difference is in the delivery mechanism. No matter what the service, Software as a Service needs to be built on a framework that can provide the following:
- Web Hosting
- Provisioning of users as required
- Method for monitoring and billing system usage
- Method for analyzing and reporting performance
- Infrastructure for providing technical support to end users
Some SaaS companies ‘roll’ their own solution that include all the above ‘infrastructure’ capabilities plus the software with the logic for their specialized service. But setting up an environment for SaaS hosting involves a level of technology expertise that is quite different than the expertise needed for developing the actual content of the service.
As a result, SaaS infrastructure providers are beginning to pop up. With SaaS software sales expected to grow by 21 percent to $5.1 billion this year, it’s an area that can be expected to have tremendous growth.
OpSource is an example of a SaaS enablement company. The target consumer of OpSource services is an ISV seeking to host services to a fairly large audience. Pricing starts at $20,000.
For smaller companies with niche software and a smaller number of customers, SaaS enablers like WebAppCabaret let’s a service developer get started at $200 per month for a single server.
Expect to see the number of software enablement companies grow in the near future in parallel with the growth of the SaaS market. And with growth, competition will increase and prices will drop. SaaS hosting may soon become as commonplace as web site hosting services are today.
