The Brave New World Of SaaS with Robert Bois

Software as a service (SaaS) offers end users the ability to access powerful software at a reasonable cost. But its growing popularity in the SMB market poses special challenges for channel partners accustomed to selling, installing, and maintaining software for their clients. For some perspective on how SaaS will impact the industry, ChannelPro’s William Kozel spoke with Robert Bois, a research director at AMR Research Inc.

ChannelPro: What makes SaaS attractive to SMBs?
Bois: In a lot of cases, it can be an SMB’s only option for leveraging enterprise-class software, since many SMBs don’t have the IT or human resources to install and deploy an enterprise-class software system. In reality, just because SMBs have smaller revenues than a large enterprise, it doesn’t mean their business problems are any less complex. And yet, software vendors have historically treated SMBs as though they were less complex, offering slimmeddown software that doesn’t really meet their needs. With SaaS, a vendor can develop a major piece of enterprise software that is partitioned among many users—and then pass the savings along in the form of costs that SMBs can afford.