Last month I went out to Europe and was dismayed at the state of the SaaS market out there. Seemed there was still a lot of confusion about the meaning of SaaS. I had heard of one "SaaS" event that included SAP, an Integrator, and a Hoster. It was actually an event on hosting SAP.
I was hoping that the market would have gotten past the point of confusing Hosted Applications and true Software as a Service. It seemed it would be another 6 - 12 months before we started seeing real traction.
It seems I was overly pessimistic. I just got back from SIIA's On-Demand Europe Conference. There were a number of EMEA based SaaS companies doing interesting stuff from companies like Wesupply doing supply chain management, Lecayla doing billing and metering, and Clarizen doing project management.
Even more exciting than the number of SaaS companies already based in Europe was the level of discussion. Instead of bemoaning how European Enterprise would not buy SaaS, the companies instead were excited about new ways to go to market, partner and bring in value. The level of discussion was on par with most US based SaaS conferences.
Needless to say, I know we are going to become much more agressive in selling and delivering in Europe. It will be great to see the market develop over the next few months.
1 comment:
You are right, more and more SaaS emerge each month. I recently found this one. They've got thousands of users and are pretty strong opponents to their competitors. I've actually decided to try the tool out. I like it very much so far.
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