Klir Technologies Weblog

Build features that are only available from a SaaS product version – the big guys can’t match it.

As SaaS continues to take root in the marketplace, more companies are emerging that offer little more than a web version of an enterprise software solution. Consider the number of knock-offs of office productivity tools. There are literally dozens of vendors that offer word processing and spreadsheets free-of-charge over the Internet.

However, what is the motivator to change from my existing solution? While version control and sharing features are “nice-to-have” capabilities for collaboration, it is not enough to motivate a change in my habit. More importantly, given that I need to work on a plane, and already have MS Office at home and work, the incentive to make the change is little to none.

An overarching value proposition that cannot be readily duplicated by traditional enterprise software solutions is fundamental to long-term success as a SaaS provider. Specifically, you must deliver a capability, a feature, or information that is facilitated by centralized administration and management of user data. Two great examples:

1. Salesforce.com offers a good lesson by appealing to the VP of Sales, to manage, oversee and access data from remote field sales personnel. Specifically the added layer of oversight, reporting and visibility, has proven to be a sufficient value proposition to spur a migration from enterprise to SaaS CRM solutions, given the immediacy and availability of important sales data.

2. Concur Technologies empowers companies to control expenses and globally enforce travel policies from a centralized management portal. Concur’s solutions are particularly compelling because it readily improves business process and reduces internal administrative costs, while facilitating quick expense reimbursement for employees.

Both of these companies have captured the admiration of the industry, press and analysts, because of their ability to differentiate and erode market share from more significant, established enterprise software vendors. Their differentiation is based on a value proposition that compels a commitment to change and migrate from the old to new.

Competitively, the big guys have more money than you do as an emerging SaaS vendor. Get creative, and examine the business processes of your target user to evaluate how you can offer something compelling, unique and different that is facilitated by your SaaS business model. It must be significant enough to motivate change. 

"Nice to have" doesn't win.

An Open Forum – a Note to the Klir Community

In the first few weeks of the Klir Analytics 3.0 Beta program, we have already added nearly 800 registered users to the Klir Forum. For those of you who have installed our product but have yet to explore the Forum, the Klir Forum is intended to be “owned” by IT professionals who are interested in optimizing business processes and in delivering increased value to their organizations.

Demographically, Klir Community members are as diverse as their IT infrastructures. Every market segment and company size is represented, yet all community members share a set of overriding objectives. By introducing the first Web 2.0 community-based solution empowering IT professionals to publish, copy, and share best practice dashboards, reports, and alerts, we are committed to finding new ways to help our community meet those objectives.

Through the Klir Forum, we are opening our doors to any expert helper who wants to join us, and to any interested contributor who might provide thoughts and conversation. Through the forum, we will address your needs and be guided by your experience, and we’re confident that your participation and collaboration will generate new thinking, which will serve the collective needs of the community.

The Forum is designed to serve the needs of everyone, at every level of experience, from beginner to the most experienced IT professional. Obviously, it is our hope that the forum will serve as one of the primary conduits for feature and usability feedback, which will move our product and business forward. You are invited to help us find ways to solve more problems in better ways and share your expertise with like-minded professionals.

When you register for Klir Analytics, you’ll be provided with a user name and temporary password. You’ll also have the opportunity to create an alias, which will serve as your identifier in the Klir Forum. We’ll respect your privacy, as well as your right to identify yourself if you decide to do so. Our privacy policy is posted prominently on each of our website pages and our Forum guidelines can be found on our Help Wiki. We’re placing this forum at your disposal, and we hope that you’ll accept our sincere invitation to join and participate in the conversation.  Welcome.

Release 101 for SaaS and Web 2.0

Helping investors and customers understand and appreciate the value of rapidly evolving best practices is a critical step for the SaaS solutions provider. Traditional software development and delivery processes are proven and accepted, and customers accustomed to the on-premise software licensing paradigm encounter new operational imperatives when considering an on-demand solution for the first time. Understanding the implications of a rapid development and release model is a common impediment to SaaS adoption. Annual release cycles conform to the norm and confer a sense of low risk and stability, while the concept of quarterly or monthly release cycles represents a foundational change. Today we’ll discuss the operational implications of the rapid release cycle and the advantages and challenges for customers and providers.

The Long Cut to the Long Tail

The SaaS model neither infers nor permits an erosion of the basic software development planning and management principles or practices that have evolved to assure quality. The best SaaS companies develop software and manage release using the same basic guidelines employed by models that are more traditional. In practice, the software development model is irrelevant, as long as the principles of requirements analysis, specification, software architecture, implementation, test, and documentation are managed to a quality result. Building software is not an artistic endeavor; it is an exercise in process, measurement, delivery, and execution. Each iterative software release must deliver value to secure customer confidence and acceptance of the rapid release model, and the time-honored axiom of “Do the right things right” is foundational to the quality of any SaaS product.

Better for Who?

A frequent release environment presents challenges for the SaaS provider. Traditional lines of responsibility and demarcation are blurred inside a SaaS company, where software and its supporting infrastructure are inseparable, and where customer adoption is immediate and ubiquitous. These conditions require unprecedented alignment between Engineering and Operations teams and compel an absolute commitment to balancing quality, usability, and time to market objectives. A true multi-tenant SaaS solution provider has the ability to deliver universal functionality to every user at next log-in, a powerful position. Once you pull the release lever, no customer action is required to take advantage of your new functionality. Since late adoption is not an option for the SaaS customer, it is the responsibility of the provider to understand and address implications for the user community before delivery. When considering the value of a conceptual feature or usability change, ask “What does the customer do with what she has today, will she still be able to do it tomorrow, and does she need what I plan to give her next?” Changes delivered to customers must be additive; SaaS providers who constantly release improvements which are perceived as remediative by users risk the introduction of legitimate concerns about the maturity of their product and its associated product releases processes.

Collaborative Agility

The rapid release schedule compresses the training and information dissemination cycle for customers and users, so it is important that front-end functionality be presented in an intuitive and understandable fashion. One common objection to releasing “too often” is the challenge of addressing user confusion arising from changes to existing product functions and capabilities, which have been integrated into core customer business processes. This objection should be taken seriously, as it often points to ineffective product management, where the customer position is inadequately represented in the analysis and planning process, or to insufficient and ineffective marketing communication programs. Both of these problems are easily solved through awareness, acceptance, and process improvements. At Klir, we carefully evaluate the implications of any considered functional change by assessing the historical usage of our community, and integrate this process into our formal requirements process. For example, we recently eliminated a subset of KPI report templates and ongoing support for Internet Explorer 5.0 only after we validated their usage within our community over the preceding 12 months and were satisfied that we would not impact a single user. In a multi-tenant environment, complete satisfaction is not always possible, but as a goal, it represents an appropriate starting point.

Always Open

Back-end releases are governed by the same considerations, and must be carefully planned and managed within defined service windows and within established SLA parameters. Frequent data center upgrades, which are visible to the user community, introduce a sense of insufficient planning, sub-optimal system architecture, or a reactive provider culture. Each back-end update introduces the risk of a deleterious impact on uptime and reliability, and unintended customer awareness of otherwise routine system administration has beleaguered many early stage SaaS companies. Top providers set themselves apart through a focus on operational excellence, a strategy that pays dividends in the mid- and long term.

Over the past few years, the maturation of open source software, the emergence of on-demand and self-service solutions, and the value shift to information access and analysis has created unprecedented demand for solutions delivered using the SaaS model. To take advantage of these efficiencies and turn them into opportunities, a degree of market evolution is required. Market concerns related to a rapid release cycle are best assuaged through performance. A SaaS release strategy that provides consistent improvements to the product without negatively impacting customer business processes or end user familiarity is the key to long term success. By doing the right things right, a top SaaS provider will enable customers to achieve continuous business process improvement from a rapid release cycle, creating evangelical users and real value.

3.0 Beta Launch & SaaScon

I am spending a nice relaxing morning, on a beautiful day in Seattle, finally getting a chance to catch up and reflect a little on a busy week. We had a very successful launch of the Klir Analytics 3.0 Beta on Monday, and also spent the first two days of the week (Monday and Tuesday) down in San Francisco at IDG's SaaScon event. I wanted to share some thoughts on both of these exciting events for the company.

A significant release like the one we had on Monday is always an exciting team event. The work that goes into a release like this is almost always intense, and pushes individuals as well as the team. It is sometimes easy to get lost in the forest in the closing weeks of a launch, as there are so many tasks that go into the final release, that you tend to forget the significance of the changes and the work going on. It really is incredible how much work was completed in such a relatively short period of time. Now that we are through the release (and surely back into another big push!) I hope everyone on the team will at least get a chance to take a step back and realize what an amazing job was done by all.

So what was done? A TON! We had four significant components to the new release. First is an entirely new front end UI. Included in the facelift was re-coding the front end in AJAX. Taking a page out of some of the interesting developments on the consumer side of applications, the interface is dynamic, flexible, and easy to personalize to each individuals preference.

The second significant update with the release is launching a community based forum and user group in connection with the service, allowing for collaboration and sharing of best practices. There will be a lot more to talk about on this subject in the coming months. There is incredible excitment, interest, and opportunity for the market - especially for small to mid-size companies with this new capability.

The third part of the release is that we are now delivering relevant industry content directly into the application. This means that users will have important and helpful content delivered directly to them at the time they need it most. This is going to lead to a significant improvement in the workflow and process that IT users typically go through when managing their IT investments.

And lastly, with this release, we are now offering a free entry-level version of the service. We are already seeing a large number of users coming in and registering.

So, as you can imagine, there was a lot to talk about in the release, and we were fortunate enough to get a fair amount of press around the announcement on Monday. Articles were published by eWeek, Network World, CRN, IDG News, and others. If you are interested in reading some of them, check out the news section of our main site. One of my favorites was Phil Wainewrights posting on his ZDnet SaaS blog. I have been following his writings for years, including a few years ago when he was writing a lot around the idea of Loosely Coupled. We also had the pleasure of meeting with him and other industry thought leaders at SaaScon, which brings me to the other item I wanted to share.

As I mentioned, we spent the first part of the week down in San Francisco at SaaScon. The event was interesting and well attended. One of the highlights of the show was getting to meet with some of the thought leaders in the space. In addition to meeting with Phil Wainewright, we were able to sit down with Tim Chou (former head of Oracle's On-Demand effort and author of "The end of Software"), who gave the opening address on Monday morning, and John Gallant from NetworkWork. It was rewarding to get really positive reaction and feedback from both of these guys, as they see any number of new ideas, approaches and companies in a given week.

So, all in all, it was a fantastic and exciting week. The new product looks incredible, the response from users and industry experts has been fantastic, and working on a great team has been rewarding.