Story in development – Seeking on-demand expertise and experience

A general call-out here for anyone who has had experience with using more than one or two on-demand software applications within a business environment - especially if you've tried to link them together into some form of office automation system. There are plenty of on-demand tools out there, but not a lot of experience in integrating them and making them work together .... Please contact me by e-mail with any suggestions.

Comments

[Marc Lehmann]

We connected Salesforce.com to Saasu.com. Provided it free to customers. The combination of automated billing/payments and automated CRM is hard to beat. Recently 88miles.net connected their time management system to Saasu. Customer need for higher level time tracking features drove the connector development. The Web2 hybrid created hits consultants, contractor markets nicely. We are internally referring to the outcomes as hybrid offerings, niche/vertical offerings by x-breeding a couple of flat market SaaS offerings. As the two flat SaaS offering simprove and enhance so does you niche solution, very cool :)

[Peter J Cooper]

Saasbay.com might also be of interest. Aim is to list SaaS offerings that are interoperable out of the box to save time.

Brad, I have more than a bit of experience in this sphere too - across about 4 firms - if you want to have a chat.

Cheers, Peter.

peterjcooper.com

[Oscar Trimboli]

Software as a Software: Software gets saucy in Australia from Springboard Research

This report from Phil Hassey from Springboard Research is an enlightening look at the local marketplace. It starts to build out a map of the local SaaS economy highlighting organisation across a broad spectrum of the ecosystem including Salesforce.com, WebEx (Cisco), RightNow Technologies, Oracle, NetSuite,WebCentral, Telstra, E-Mantra, Microsoft, Progress Software, SAP and 30 other Australian organisation.

It is a comprehensive view across the customer view and the supplier view of the market and makes an attempt to predict the growth of the SaaS marketplace in Australia.

Here is the link to the press release announcing this report - Software as a Software: Software gets saucy in Australia

Software as a Service Hits Its Stride in Australia and New Zealand SaaS Awareness is widespread in ANZ; Springboard Research estimates the ANZ

[Oscar Trimboli]

Aussie SaaS company gets Microsoft gold stamp
Gaining Microsoft gold certification comes at the perfect time as Emantra seeks to expand its channel
Matthew Sainsbury 31 January, 2008 15:30:22

Local software-as-a-service (SaaS) provider, Emantra, is ramping up its channel expansion plans after scoring Microsoft gold partner certification.

The company is working on a new division and devoting greater resources to the channel business, as well as appointing a dedicated account manager to look after its Microsoft relationship. Managing director, Ross Dewar, said having gold status will add to the its market credibility.

"It'll give us a tap into leads coming from Microsoft and its partners," he said.

Emantra provides hosting solutions around messaging, servers, storage and websites. In order to gain the certification, the company had to meet specific technical capabilities and have a number of Microsoft certified technicians, as well as achieve a set sales quota, Dewar said.

"It's a validation from Microsoft itself, and a requirement in our business to access larger opportunities," he said.

Emantra has been in operation for two-and-a-half years and has regularly contributed to the Microsoft community, running events as well as community forums.

Dewar said Microsoft gold status had been a company goal since day one.

He expected the virtualisation engine for Microsoft Server 2008, due in the middle of this year, to be a big boost for Emantra.

With broadband expansion in Australia, the company was also seeing increasing interest in high-definition Web conferencing and remote Web backup, Dewar said.