Don Dodge – Next Big Thing: SaaS – new software model, new challenges

14th of April 2006 by admin

Don Dodge – Next Big Thing: SaaS – new software model, new challenges

Interesting commentary on Software as a service model

One Response to “Don Dodge – Next Big Thing: SaaS – new software model, new challenges”

Well, with every challenge – comes a solution….

smartfundit.com, a CCL company, is the world's first independent software financing platform otherwise known as the Finance Web, as described by global analysts. Launched at the beginning of this year, smartfundit.com is where vendors, finance and leasing providers and complementary suppliers work together to easily, transparently and quickly finance customers' software procurement.

The Finance Web enables software companies with licensing models from Perpetual to Software as a Service to browse, search and source in real time the best available finance opportunities and deliver these as part of their product offering to meet their business and customer needs. By enabling customers to procure software products as a subscription-based service, smartfundit has created an ??~E- Bay of software finance' where both the software and finance community can collaborate using the latest web 2.0 technologies to deliver a consistent and standardised experience to their customers.

Since 1993, CCL has built a heritage on helping software companies' gain a competitive advantage through increased shareholder value, improved bottom line results and better business management. During this period, CCL has delivered innovative software financing solutions to some of the world's largest organisations and has also invested in software companies that have been striving to make their mark using a subscription-based licensing model.

With independent market analysts predicting that subscription-based licensing will be worth an estimated $42 billion worldwide by 2008, we were keen to build and deliver a Global and scaleable platform that would enable our finance partners to secure critical market share without the traditional go to market costs.

The Finance Web from smartfundit.com is the only platform that aggregates the leading technology funders that are interested in financing customers' procurement of software, together with the leading software providers who want to work with the finance community to deliver funding solutions to their customers.

The platform has been in development for over 2 years and has received significant investment. Before launch, the team commissioned an independent survey of UK independent software vendors (ISV) to validate their business model. The aim was to assess how ISVs perceive and use subscription licensing and the role of software financing today, its benefits and inhibitors, and how they plan to harness the licensing and financing methods in the future.

In fewer than three months from its launch, the smartfundit site received more than a quarter of a million ??ohits??? with more than a third coming from the US. More than 230 software vendors are already relying on smartfundit to manage their software sales pipeline and to underpin their subscription software financing models.

Our vision is to create a platform that enables both software vendors and the finance community to collaborate and deliver the most comprehensive funding solutions to the fastest growing market in the world.