SaaS channels coming of age

At Monexa, we've been writing about the emergence of successful channel strategies within the SaaS community for some time. Late last year our VP of Sales, Kevin Lennox, wrote about the importance of channel strategies as SaaS companies penetrate the mainstream.

We've seen a number of announcements recently around channel strategies in the SaaS community. Some, like the Microsoft reversal on who will own the billing relationship in the channel (microsoft or their VARs) make it clear that the large traditional ISVs with established channel strategies are actively implementing their SaaS strategies, even if they're a little rough around the edges.

Just yesterday, Intacct announced a channel relationship that will plant their SaaS offering directly in the mainstream of the SMB accounting and financial services industry. This is a very significant announcement from a pure-play SaaS provider.

Monexa has an interesting vantage point of the happenings in the SaaS market with respect to channel strategies. We provide an on-demand subscriber management and recurring billing solution that has specific strength around billing recurring services with channel or reseller relationships. So, our customers and prospects run the gamet of SaaS startups, traditional ISVs launching SaaS services and successful pure-play SaaS companies.

In 2009, we've seen an enormous increase in the number of prospects in our pipeline that are launching SaaS services into existing or newly created channels. Almost daily, we're talking to pureplay SaaS companies, but also traditional ISVs looking for subscriber management and recurring billing solutions that will support their channel strategies.

From where we sit, the Intacct announcement is only the first of many coming down the pipe. At Monexa, we share Jeff Kaplan's view that 2009 will be the year of the channel.

SaaS or on-premise, channel partners and VAR’s are equally important

In the past month, I attended 3 SaaS industry events (Softletter's SaaS University, Salesforce.com's Dreamforce, and SIIA's On-Demand conference) to keep up with what is happening in SaaS and Cloud Computing, and to investigate new partner channels for IP Applications on-demand subscription billing and payments platform.

A key message at all three events was how channel partners and VAR's played a key role in almost every SaaS and Cloud infrastructure vendors' strategy. This was especially gratifying to hear because a couple of months ago I wrote a blog article challenging the wisdom of a significant analyst group that had suggested SaaS companies would not go to market with partners.

When researching to support my argument I came across Intacct, a SaaS company with what appeared to be a mature partner strategy. So at the SIIA On-Demand conference I was not surprised to see Daniel Druker, Intacct's SVP of Marketing and Business Development lead a panel of SaaS executives in a discussion on the importance of channels and VAR's to all of their businesses.

The point is that the SaaS industry from a partnering perspective is no different than the traditional on-premise software business. Software companies, whether on premise or SaaS, still need to develop new markets, deliver vertical expertise and service their customers and channels.VAR's will play a big part.