Aggressive SaaS deployments in 2009

According to IDC SaaS will grow by more than 40 percent in the current year.

Hardware and software will continue its commodization spiral which will lead to service commodization. The idea is not becoming the low price leader but to be perceived as value for money moving forward in this economy. Today companies are looking closely are the values of their internal staff, aligning current costs with business goals, and evaluating risk ownership. More organizations are willing to evaluate SaaS as an alternative to reduce overall cost via opex versus the traditional capex. As quoted by IDC "right-sized, zero-CAPEX alternatives to on-premise applications."

According to IDC, by the end of 2009, 76% of US organizations will use at least one SaaS-delivered application for business use revised from previous SaaS growth projection which has 73% in 2010 (see below).

All the data points to our partner program approach to SaaS enablement allowing partners to reduce barrier to offer more products, insulate from ongoing changes in IT and position for rapid growth during this economy.

2009 MSP Watch

An interesting article from MSPmentor with regards to Dell aggressively pushing their managed services.

Joe made some excellent points on the fact that Dell is focused on the mid-market while small MSPs gets the SMB space. There is also the argument that MSPs will do a better job servicing their clients vs big guys like Dell which allows a separation in market share.

It will be interesting to see what MSPs will do once Dell gains more ground as momentum shifts to À la carte service at very competitive prices. Hardware and software will continue its commoditizing path to serve the SaaS model, aggressive direct sales will be the focus as time passes. You can't piss off everyone in one go, but you can break them down so only the strong survives.