During recent Microsoft Worldwide Partner Conference 2008, Microsoft released details about its SaaS initiative & its comments about SaaS adoption by ISVs.

Microsoft has established 'Microsoft Software + Services Incubation Center Program'  through which ISVs are guided through a structured series of business and architectural consulting sessions with the support of an established hosting provider to help ensure their business models and applications are ready to address the challenges of SaaS based delivery.  This program now includes 20 incubation centers worldwide with 10 in Europe, eight in North America, and two in Asia. More than 550 independent software vendors have enrolled since its launch in 2006.

John Zanni, general manager of worldwide hosting at Microsoft, said: "Microsoft realizes that the evolution of the software industry will reach far beyond just bringing software to the browser. Partnerships are critical for ISVs to be successful in the new world of software plus services. The program builds an integrated ecosystem to help ISVs deploy service-based applications. Now through the tremendous success of this program, there is no doubt that building an integrated ecosystem plays an integral role in helping ISVs deploy service-based applications"

Considering elevated initiatives from company like Microsoft, SaaS transition by ISVs looks more promising.

Ovum (www.ovum.com) , a consulting and advisory services with focus on convergence across telecoms, IT services and software. Ovum clients  range from start-ups to Fortune 500 companies and governments. They include IT vendors, IT service providers, technology user organisations, telecom operators, regulators, equipment suppliers, consultancies and investors.

Ovum recently published article 'Pass SaaS to India?' which is an extract taken from Ovum's Straight Talk service. This daily email bulletin provides Ovum's expert's views and opinions on important news and events in global IT and telecoms. This article discussed transition of traditional software products into software as a service (SaaS) offerings. Article further enlist challenges like costly technology & R/D investment required by Western ISVs (Independent Software Vendors) during transition of its legacy software products into SaaS/On-demand offering. Ovum strongly advised use of Outsource product development services by ISVs in US & Europe to control transition cost & benfit from technology, domain & process expertise.This article featured e-Zest as one of the Outsourced product vendor who is offering & benefiting from SaaS enablement /SaaS transition services. e-Zest is working with ISVs & SaaS startups for SaaS delivery consulting & implementation from last 3 years.

According to Gartner, a third of all software vendors will opt for transition to SaaS model in the next 3 years, and 40% of new applications will be built on it; which means if you are not on the SaaS platform, your competition might soon be.  Almost an year a back, e-Zest lauched 'SaaS enable your Software Products' as an OPD portfolio service, now with Ovum's recommendation it seems become a de-facto option for ISVs to use OPD services for SaaS transition/Saas enablement.

Today it'€™s my first post on e-Zest corporate blog and I am very much excited to see lot of interest from readers and within e-Zest in very short span of time. Right now IT world is talking about state of US economy and its impact on outsourcing and specifically offshore outsourcing of IT and ITES services. In the flat world business dynamics are changing fast and I believe innovation in business processes, product and services,business models and service delivery approaches will be key factors in competitive success of organizations worldwide.

I see three key technology drivers having major impact in 2008 for consumer products or services accessed using browsers and business applications used by enterprises for managing business processes. Maturity of social media applications and Web 2.0 technologies, Industry wide acceptance of Software as a Service(SaaS) delivery based business applications and few success stories of successful implementation of service oriented architecture(SOA) based enterprise business platforms.

We should not see each of these technologies as silos growing independent of each other, rather convergence of Web2.0 technologies, SaaS delivery and SOA will drive major business innovations in next few years. We should also understand that recession in USA will drive faster adaption of this technology convergence than adversely affecting this, as pressing bottom-lines, cost cutting, personal pressure driving need for social space and need for integration of existing platforms and services for integrated solutions offerings will drive key business innovations. 

Have you thought of this in your business plan for year 2008?