SoftwareONE and ISVs Unite to Deliver Innovative SaaS Solutions

SoftwareONE’s Unite 2020 was a virtual event directed to the partner ecosystem providing insights on industry trends, innovating and building profitable business models. Both live and on-demand content was delivered by SoftwareONE executives, services owners and channel leaders. Mat Showers, business owner for SoftwareONE’s cloud managed services, presented a session titled “Productizing Your Application”. Showers shared his expertise with ISV’s looking to move existing applications or build new solutions in a SaaS based-model to deliver more customer value and long-term relationships.

Showers level-set by highlighting common challenges ISV’s face in taking their solutions to market.

• Building a MSP Channel – Many ISVs understand their customer requirements and market needs but are unable to deliver that product in a SaaS and managed service.
• Controlling Application Performance – Poor hardware and networking performance can affect your application performance for the end user resulting in a loss of confidence and trust.
• Investment Costs – Building capabilities to deliver, maintain and control your application in a managed service portfolio takes investment with significant costs and risk.
• Publisher Recognition – Whether you are building on Microsoft Azure or another platform, you should earn recognition from your publisher partner for driving customer outcomes. Being aligned with the publisher so you can earn go-to-market support is often overlooked by ISVs.
• Understanding Development Needs – Building a deeper relationship through managed services with your end user is critical for long term success. If you find yourself in a support-only or break-fix relationship with your end users, then you risk future development being out of alignment with your client needs.

These ISV challenges are underpinned by the threat of external SaaS-based competitive solutions. As customers are looking to reduce IT overhead and capital expenditures, they are turning to products that provide seamless installs, updates, and overall management.

SoftwareONE supports ISV’s in the transformation to a SaaS solution and an ongoing managed service relationship with the end user. This methodology aligns to the needs and maturity of your organization. We approach the software development lifecycle in five phases:

• Plan – We want to work with you on your go-to-market motions, including pricing, delivery and optimization of your product
• Develop – We support the design and code of your solution for optimal performance. With integrated management toolsets, your customers receive secure and reliable service that was promised in the sales process.
• Test – As you bring new requirements into your solution, you must ensure those features are properly tested before deploying into production environments. SoftwareONE provides you the secure testing, landing zones and intelligence for a market-ready product.
• Deploy – Having a standardized, repeatable Azure subscription containing the full stack of your application and integrated with a management pack ensures your customers are accelerated into adoption of your tools.
• Maintain – Bringing ongoing maintenance into your application with a dedicated support team and toolset assures security and protection of the data in the environment.

You retain and further strengthen your customer relationship through managed services. You gain new sales channels for your application by being able to sell a SaaS-based solution without all the investment in people, process and tools to create a managed solution. You can refocus your efforts on delivering more value through delivery of more product features, ongoing customer business reviews and consultancy services.