Workday Raises $75 Million- Good Sign for the Business Software World

April 29, 2009 Gadi Shamiainvestment, IT, SaaS, Software as a Service, Workday1 Comment

Workday, a financial and human resources SaaS provider, has secured $75 million in Series E funding. In my humble opinion, this is a very good sign that investments in business software are going to get a boost in the next few years.

Look back 15 years ago and compare the progress in “consumer computing” to the progress in “business computing” – the differences are amazing. Consumers moved from 14K modems to cable, from one inbox per office to unlimited mail accounts and storage, from backing up files on floppy disks to box.net, from from Rolodex to manage their personal lives to Facebook, from expensive and complex Photoshop to Picasa, from mail orders to Amazon and from paper atlas to Google maps. Our lives as consumers are almost 100% digitized now. Continue reading “Workday Raises $75 Million- Good Sign for the Business Software World” →

Can the financial crisis help SaaS companies in the long term?

September 30, 2008October 17, 2008 Gadi ShamiaSaaS, Software as a Service, Strategy, VC, venture capital5 Comments

No doubt that the financial crisis will hurt everyone. With a frozen financial system the entire idea of US capitalism (borrow cash, put it to work, grow to be profitable, invest again…) is on hold. Eric Schonfeld concluded today that VCs and Startups will not be immune to the crisis and I can not agree with him more. The one thing to remember though, is that a financial Crisis, a war or other disasters impact some people/industries/countries more than others, so while no winners will emerge, some may lose less.

One of the sectors that may lose less is the little (but fast growing) SaaS (Software as a Service) industry. Here is why: Continue reading “Can the financial crisis help SaaS companies in the long term?” →

How to measure a good SaaS company

September 27, 2008 Gadi ShamiaBusiness, business applications, enterprise software, Gadi Shamia, SaaS, Software as a Service1 Comment

I had an enjoyable lunch meeting with a general partner in a leading Bay Area VC firm and during the discussion he wanted to compare notes on the way I evaluate a good SaaS company. I thought that my answer may be of general interest for employees or investors in the space- so here goes… Continue reading “How to measure a good SaaS company” →

Going 100% SaaS

September 6, 2008September 6, 2008 Gadi Shamia100% SaaS, SaaS, SMB, Software as a Service5 Comments

Yesterday I moderated a panel titled “Going 100% SaaS” during Office 2.0 conference. There is a full video so if you have 40 min to spare you can see it all. It was also covered in Ben Kepes blog.

The panelist were 3 SaaS vendors (Dan Druker from Intacct, Rob Holl from Adaptive Planning and Jeff Schultz from Bill.com) and one near 100% SaaS customer, Doug Harr from Ingres. Although we didn’t get to talk much about the future of SaaS, several interesting takeaways came out of the event:

100% SaaS is real- Companies like Ingres made strategic decision to become 100% SaaS and they move programmatically toward that. If it was not for Exchange and Office, Ingres would be 100% in the cloud) Continue reading “Going 100% SaaS” →

Seven Things That SaaS Vendors Need To Do In Order To Increase Their Desirability For SMBs

November 25, 2007March 28, 2008 Gadi ShamiaGadi Shamia, SaaS, SMB, Software as a Service, UILeave a comment

There is no doubt that SaaS and on demand are here to stay: if five years ago on demand solutions looked like an Internet version of the mainframe days (strong central server, no logic in the terminal, bad user interface… sound familiar?), the SaaS applications of today look appealing and offer a good alternative to the on premise world.

Continuing with the “seven things about Saas” Theme, which started with Seven reasons why SaaS is not main street in SMB and continued with Seven reasons why SaaS will be a great success, I would like to turn to the vendors now and offer some do’s and don’ts for the industry… Continue reading “Seven Things That SaaS Vendors Need To Do In Order To Increase Their Desirability For SMBs” →

The next SaaS- Something as a Service

October 30, 2007March 31, 2008 Gadi ShamiaPC, Personal Computer, SaaS, Software as a Service4 Comments

There is a new SaaS—“Something as a Service” every month. First came the term SaaS—Software as a Service. Marc Benioff coined PaaS—Platform as a Service. Amazon came along with HaaS– hardware as a Service, and Zoli brought the latest one: CaaS—Car as a Service, in response to Shai Agassi’s launch of better place project.

If we learn from history, almost every service started as a product one owned and maintained, which turned into a service over time. Adam and Eve were the first known couple, but shortly thereafter, the first prostitute emerged, offering the real first SaaS: “Spouse as a Service.” Banks are no more than fancy language for VaaS: Vaults as a Service. With urbanization, people started moving from villages to big cities, only to meet the DaaS concept: “Dwelling as a Service,” a huge industry (house and apartment rentals) until these very days. Continue reading “The next SaaS- Something as a Service” →

Seven Reasons Why SaaS Would Be a Great Success

October 24, 2007November 9, 2007 Gadi ShamiaSaaS, Software as a Service2 Comments

I am a great believer in SaaS (Software as a service) as a future leading delivery mechanism for small and medium businesses (SMBs). Although SaaS penetration into this space is slow, there are many reasons for SaaS to prevail. It may take a while, and it will require a leap of faith from the customers and hard work from the vendor side, but it will happen. 0.9 probability as my Gartner friends taught me to say…Here are the seven reasons why SaaS is better than the current delivery mechanisms (namely software on a CD). Continue reading “Seven Reasons Why SaaS Would Be a Great Success” →

Seven reasons why SaaS is not main street in SMB

October 20, 2007March 30, 2008 Gadi ShamiaInternet, SaaS, Small and Mid Size Businesses, SMB, Software as a Service7 Comments

It was the week of Web 2.0, the annual conference that celebrates the new new new web. Tracking the news from the conference, it was clear that the new web still mainly targets consumers and individuals, and did not make any significant headway into the small- and mid-size business space (SMB). A quick scan of the tech news this week (all thanks to good old techcrunch) reveals that the industry is focused on photo editing, Internet TV, and web 2.0 mashups for your car. Even applications that are more business-oriented, like InterviewUp, are focused on the individuals (interviewees) and not on the interviewers. Continue reading “Seven reasons why SaaS is not main street in SMB” →