Author: Mark Koenig Recent Saugatuck research has indicated that Business Intelligence is becoming an increasingly important area of investment for IT users (see Note 1).  This has even been reflected in our research into SaaS adoption, which confirmed t ...

Authors: Mark Koenig, Charlie Burns, Mike West Saugatuck Research into Business Intelligence and Corporate Performance Management suggests that the role of the CFO in the Enterprise is evolving yet again.  In the past two decades, we have observed the CF ...

Author: Bruce Guptill Saugatuck’s 2007 research study on user enterprise adoption of open source software indicates increasingly predictable user paths to enterprise-wide open source presence. A typical pattern of open source adoption and deployment move ...

Authors: Mike West, Mark Koenig As part of its ongoing series looking at the transition from traditional ISV to SaaS solution provider, Saugatuck delved further into the experiences of Kadient, which has recently completed its transition from ISV to SaaS ...

Author: Bruce Guptill Despite business and IT industry press coverage of Europe as a region leading in open source adoption and use, data from Saugatuck’s recent user executive survey of open source software use and presence indicates that US firms are m ...

Author: Bruce Guptill Since the beginning of 2007, the three largest independent public software companies in business intelligence (BI) and corporate performance management (CPM) have been acquired by IT master brands: Hyperion by Oracle for $3.3 bil ...

Authors: Bill McNee, Mike West, Mark Koenig Over the past several years, Saugatuck has conducted dozens of business strategy consulting engagements with independent software vendors (ISVs) and SaaS start-ups – focusing on SaaS business strategy developme ...

Author: Bruce Guptill Continued analysis of Saugatuck's ongoing open source user survey data indicates that smaller firms are placing the greatest business importance on open source software – but larger firms are more likely to govern it more effectivel ...

Author: Bruce Guptill Open source software is not following the adoption and deployment paths that most have predicted. It already accounts for as much as ten percent of user business software, far more than previously reported or expected by industry in ...

Author: Bruce Guptill Analysis of Saugatuck survey and interview research for our recently-released open source software adoption and business study indicates that smaller enterprises – especially those with less than $100M in annual revenues – are most ...

Authors: Bruce Guptill, Mike West Saugatuck Technology attended DreamForce 2007, Salesforce.com's annual user, partner, media and analyst event. Our participation included general sessions, media/analyst sessions, one-on-ones with partners and users, and ...

Author: Bill McNee In September, 2007, Saugatuck reached out to registered members who receive our weekly Research Alerts – as well as CRS subscription clients who receive our premium research – regarding areas of research interest. In total, nearly 5 pe ...

Author: Bruce Guptill More than 7,000 users attended Salesforce's annual DreamForce '07 user and partner conference at the Moscone Center in San Francisco, September 17 - 19, 2007.  Attendance was up more than 25 percent from 2006's 5000 attendees. Sales ...

Authors: Mark Koenig, Mike West As part of Saugatuck’s ongoing software-as-a-service research agenda, we recently delved into the experiences of Concur Technologies which is one of the first ISVs to successfully make the transition from traditional ISV t ...

Authors: Mike West, Mark Koenig Salesforce, SAP, Business Objects, Google and Yahoo were all in the spotlight this past week with a flurry of announcements demonstrating serious jockeying for position in the Software-as-a-Service market. Dreamforce, the ...

Author: Bruce Guptill Today, between 10 percent and 15 percent of user enterprise executives see the inclusion of open source as an important differentiator between vendors and software offerings, or as a key reason to buy a specific solution or work wit ...

Author: Bruce Guptill Investment firm UBS released a research report on September 4, 2007 (entitled “CIO Pulse: A Quarterly Snapshot of IT Trends”), suggesting that Linux adoption at the server level is slowing significantly. The report is based on inter ...

Authors: Mike West Demand for software-as-a-service (SaaS) is rapidly increasing beyond relatively simple application functionality delivered via networks. Complex marketplaces are emerging and evolving to meet the demands of users and providers. The em ...

Authors: Mike West, Bill McNee SaaS ecosystems, SaaS marketplaces and SaaS integration platforms are often used terms, but equally often misunderstood.  We define these terms and present our taxonomy of five distinct types SaaS marketplaces: Transacti ...

Author: Bruce Guptill Last week, Saugatuck published a Strategic Perspective looking at the likely effects of the recent SCO-Novell judge’s decision (see Saugatuck Strategic Perspective MKT-379, “Debacle, Decision, and Driver: SCO-Novell-Unix-Linux Open ...

Authors: Mark Koenig, Bill McNee Of the thousands of established traditional license ISVs worldwide, Saugatuck estimates that fewer than fifteen percent are actively transitioning or already transitioned to a SaaS-based business model, with another forty ...

Author: Bruce Guptill On August 10, 2007, U.S. federal Judge Dale Kimball issued a summary judgment in the case of SCO v. Novell, stating that "Novell is the owner of the UNIX and UNIXWare copyrights." Among other findings, SCO was found to be in breach ...

Authors: Bruce Guptill, Mike West Saugatuck’s latest research indicates massive and rapid adoption of open source in two areas: 1) within user enterprises of all sizes, and 2) within software and services vendor’s offerings. Our research further indicate ...

Author: Charlie Burns Founded in 1998, acquired by EMC in 2004 for $625M, and publicly launched via IPO last week, VMware targets user IT organizations with a functionally-rich suite for virtualization of x86 servers. VMware offers an x86 virtualization ...

Author: Allison Perrin Saugatuck research with user and vendor executives indicates that the adoption and use of open source software is an increasingly important driver of SOA adoption and usage.  A variety of factors makes open source a complementary, ...

Author: Bruce Guptill Saugatuck’s open source research program has been probing vendors of open source offerings for insights and perceptions regarding open source market influence, user presence, and long-term direction. The results will be incorporated ...

Authors: Bruce Guptill, Mark Koenig, Mike West On Tuesday July 24, sales incentive management software provider Callidus Software officially announced its inclusion into AppExchange and the SaaS CRM/SFA ecosystem managed by Salesforce.com. The move shoul ...

Author: Mark Koenig Pragmatech’s SaaS-based sales effectiveness solution, inciteKnowledge, is a purpose-built content management platform designed to support the activities of the sales rep throughout the sales process.  Unlike its competition, inciteKno ...

Author: Charlie Burns Several times in reasonably recent history the rise of a new computing technology has given rise to predictions of the demise of the mainframe. For example, the wave of popularity of client-server in the mid-1990s prompted some pund ...

Author: Mike West Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) Security solutions have begun to separate themselves in the marketplace from the Managed Security Services Providers (MSSPs) who manage customer premise equipment, due to advantages of the SaaS delivery mode ...

Author: Mark Koenig On June 25th, sales performance management software provider Xactly Corporation launched Xactly Incent Managed Services for SMBs.  Targeting companies with up to 25 variably-paid payees (sales rep, customer support professionals, chan ...

Author: Bruce Guptill Feeling a combination of competitive pressure and the necessity of growth, ISVs continue to look to Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) for opportunities, markets and revenues. Most will initially focus on shifting existing on-premise soft ...

Authors: Mark Koenig, Allison Perrin Now that Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) is considered by many IT buyers as “enterprise grade,” hundreds of established ISVs are faced with strategic decisions that could determine the future of their company: Should we ...

Author: Charlie Burns Ongoing Saugatuck research with user enterprise IT and business executives shows that IT organizations continue to strive for reduced operational and support costs. The research shows two tactics - virtualization and Open Source - b ...

Authors: Bruce Guptill, Mark Koenig A year after Saugatuck wrote about SOA’s relatively slow growth despite its exceptional potential for user and vendor business flexibility and growth (see SOA: IT Means to a Business End, RA-247, 06Jun06), SOA adoption ...

Author: Bill McNee Last week, more than 2,000 senior vendor executives, venture capitalists, industry analysts and CIOs packed the Santa Clara Convention center for two days of keynotes (by the senior-most leadership of industry giants such as SAP, Micro ...

Authors: Bruce Guptill, Mark Koenig On May 8, 2007, SAP announced intentions to acquire OutlookSoft, a privately-held planning, budgeting, forecasting, and consolidation software vendor. Terms of the deal, expected to be completed in June, were not discl ...

Author: Mike West The most effective SaaS pricing exploits metrics that successfully relate to the value the user perceives – varying relative to the nature and value proposition of the SaaS solution.  While appealing to the customer’s perception of valu ...

Authors: Mike West, Mark Koenig SaaS has already entered the second of three successive, growing waves of adoption, delivery and robustness – even as many user and vendor organizations still struggle to understand the impacts of SaaS on their business, t ...

Authors: Mark Koenig, Bruce Guptill User enterprise spending on business intelligence (BI) and business/corporate performance management (BPM/CPM) software tools and solutions continues to increase, while satisfaction with most solutions falls short. Use ...

Author: Bill McNee Last week, Saugatuck Technology participated in SaaScon 2007, a leading conference for the burgeoning SaaS industry and community.  While attendance more than doubled from the inaugural version of this event last fall (see Research Ale ...

Authors: Charlie Burns, Bruce Guptill In an effort to expand its Solaris operating system presence to competitive platforms, Sun Microsystems announced plans on April 10 to open some management aspects of its Solaris ZFS file system to the Sun-administer ...

Authors: Mike West, Bill McNee, Mark Koenig SaaS is on the verge of its next major transition, beyond its early roots in delivering cost-effective stand-alone business applications (Wave I), and its current focus on delivering integrated business solutio ...

Authors: Bruce Guptill, Charlie Burns On March 28 and 29 2007, IBM hosted a two-day analyst event on open source markets, trends, developments, and impacts. The sessions included reviews and discussion of IBM’s own open source business strategies, and th ...

Author: Mark Koenig Last month, Saugatuck published C-Team Research: “Performance Gap” Reveals Business and IT Misalignment - and Opportunities for IT Vendors, MKT-322, 22Feb2007.  That Strategic Perspective examined recent research that indicates substa ...

Authors: Mike West, Bill McNee Customer adoption of SaaS is now accelerating across all customer segments, industries and geographies, reconfirming our recent assessment that SaaS is now beyond the “tipping point.” Saugatuck research shows that not only ...

Author: Mike West Customer adoption of SaaS is now on a steep and rising curve across all customer segments. Our research shows greater than 26 percent of companies now have at least one SaaS application installed, up from 11 percent a year ago, with ano ...

Authors: Mark Koenig, Mike West, Bill McNee Last week, Cisco announced the acquisition of web conferencing market leader WebEx for $57 per share or $3.2 billion.  The deal is expected to close by July.  Widely seen as an extension of the company’s strate ...

Author: Bruce Guptill While Business Intelligence, ERP, and Data Warehousing rank as the top IT spending priorities among user IT executives worldwide, the prioritization of IT spending by user enterprises for 2007 differs significantly by industry.  Non ...

Author: Bill McNee Growth and innovation is clearly on the minds of the 443 senior business, finance and IT executives recently surveyed by Saugatuck Technology and BusinessWeek Research Services. In fact, revenue growth outpaced both cost control and a ...