Cloud / SaaS Business & Marketing Empowerment

Software as a Service (SaaS) is fast becoming the new paradigm for the design and sales of business applications. This emerging approach is changing the role of ISVs, VARs and other vendors, and promises to create new and more profitable revenue streams.

The objective is no longer just to create and sell packaged products, but to build, offer, and support functional software-powered services at agreed-upon performance levels and deliver these applications as service contracts instead of product sales. This shift from providing products to offering Software as a Service requires a substantial shift in your business model.

Developing a SaaS Strategy

SaaS offerings involve far more than subscription pricing and hosting services. Next-generation, re-architected SaaS application software delivers a greatly reduced cost of ownership and far higher value over time. Fast implementation, included upgrades, increased software flexibility, and higher customer responsiveness all combine to greatly increase the software's value at a fraction of the total cost of ownership.

Business Empowerment

Business Empowerment programs are meant to encourage a healthy discussion and foster the analysis to ensure the following:

The questions of “why” a SaaS enabled offering is desired, and “who” will buy, it are properly answered.
Existing revenue streams can be protected when a new, lower cost offering is introduced into the market. SaaS offerings are priced based on a subscription model according to the value they deliver–not simply an amortized version of a traditional business application software and maintenance pricing model.
All rational business expansion options are explored, including M&A, channel development, new markets and geographic expansion.
A thorough understanding of the business implications of a SaaS strategy; including revenue recognition, Wall Street expectations, sales compensation, etc…
An actionable business plan is produced

Read White paper

Explore the Shared Risk–Shared Reward Cost Model

Something you won’t find offered by any other infrastructure software company is Progress’ unique approach to helping SaaS partners use the technology to build business applications for delivery as a service.

We understand that the ultimate buyer or consumer of a SaaS offering will expect to pay for the service as they use it, and not in the form of a large, upfront license fee and ongoing annual maintenance payments. The shared-risk, shared-reward approach pioneered by Progress allows our partners to acquire the software to develop, deploy, integrate, manage and sell a SaaS offering without a large upfront cost to them.

Furthermore, since SaaS offerings deliver value differently from one offering to another, Progress’ pricing model adapts to each offering. Progress and partners work together to define the metric that best measures the value delivered by their offering and base our price on the actual value to the customers.