Software as a Service (SaaS)

SAN MATEO, Calif. — May 20, 2008 — NetSuite Inc. (NYSE: N - News), a leading vendor of on-demand, integrated business management software suites for small and mid-sized businesses and divisions of large companies, today announced the release of NetSuite OneWorld Software Company Edition. This latest offering from NetSuite gives mid-market software companies the ability to run and manage integrated end-to-end software business processes spanning global operations—an industry-leading capability made possible through NetSuite technology that enables its integrated business suite to span the widest range of both front- and back-office applications. This new edition includes all the capabilities of NetSuite OneWorld (announced in April 2008), which enables multi-national companies to run global operations in real-time, and includes features specifically created to automate processes unique to software companies, such as renewals automation, revenue recognition, complex commission management and multi-tier channel management. For more details on NetSuite OneWorld Software Company Edition, please visit www.netsuite.com/software.

Running a software company is challenging due to complex and strict accounting and reporting requirements. To address these challenges, historically, many software companies have purchased multiple applications to run their software business operations: one to manage the sales team; one for commission management; one to manage financial processes such as renewals and revenue recognition, and yet another application for channel management. This fragmented approach typically is costly, can lead to a higher rate of errors in calculating financial results, and can result in less favorable customer experiences, particularly at the time of renewal. Once a company expands, particularly internationally, this mix of more expensive applications is often multiplied many times over, and can leave a company with very limited or delayed visibility into its operations and financial performance, especially across its multi-national operations. The lack of real-time visibility offered by this fragmented approach generally makes it difficult to drill down to local or regional-level information in real-time for timely course corrections.

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Good news, Software as a Service is the only solution for Web site vulnerability management, asserts Stephanie Fohn, chief executive officer of WhiteHat Security, because of its scalability and ease of implementation, among other reasons.

By Stephanie Fohn

Securing Web applications is the No. 1 problem facing security professionals today. With 162 million Web sites in existence and millions more popping up each month, the sheer size of the problem is staggering — not to mention the fact that nine out of 10 Web sites have serious vulnerabilities that can put critical customer data at risk. In fact, a new malware-infected Web site is discovered every 14 seconds. So, why aren’t more companies solving this problem?

Securing Web applications is a complex process that is extremely difficult to manage. Large corporations typically have hundreds — and sometimes even thousands — of publicly facing Web sites to secure. New Web sites are constantly being created, and the existing sites being changed all the time — with very little security oversight built into the process. The other challenge is the changing Web site security environment in terms of attacks. New Web hacking techniques are being discovered all the time — at least one new sophisticated attack vector is published every week.

A common approach to this problem is to purchase a Web application scanning tool and perform the work in-house, mainly due to the mistaken belief that scanning Web sites is similar to scanning networks for vulnerabilities. Corporate security teams assume the process is straightforward, fully automated, and will point out the vulnerabilities and where changes need to be made. They also believe that scanners will allow them to retain control over the vulnerability management process. This is simply not the case.

No Scanning Tools Needed

Web application vulnerability scanners are sophisticated tools that require substantial ongoing customization and tuning, expertise to operate, and time spent analyzing results to reduce false positives and duplicates. It’s for these reasons and more that scanning tools have proven to be an ineffective solution for the enterprise. So what is the answer? Software as a Service (SaaS) solutions are designed from the ground up to scale massively, support the largest enterprises and offer the most compelling business efficiencies.

Think of it this way: With a scanner, a single qualified person might be able to set up, scan and analyze three to five Web sites per month. That’s roughly 36 to 60 per year. Remember that’s only one scan per year per Web site — it is not adequate if the Web sites happen to change more than once a year. For organizations with dozens, hundreds or even thousands of Web sites, using scanners in-house requires a major investment in hiring, training and infrastructure building — not to mention software licensing costs. The control that security professionals seek is not delivered with scanners like it is with SaaS.

Further, you must be able to find, hire and retain those qualified people, which is very difficult in the Web application security arena. The vast majority of security professionals have backgrounds which are deeply rooted in network security, but who have very little experience with application security. Once found, experienced Web application security professionals can command top dollar, making the "investment" in application security much more costly.

Making Measurable Improvements

SaaS is not only one of the most compelling solutions for Web site vulnerability management — it is the only solution, for a number of reasons:

• Scalability. A SaaS-based solution is the only solution that can scale to meet the needs of a large enterprise. A SaaS platform, by definition, is built to handle huge volume. In this case, a SaaS-based Web site vulnerability management platform can assess tens of thousands of sites simultaneously, while a scanning tool can typically scan only one site at a time.
• Rapid technology improvement. A SaaS solution is specifically designed to excel in a rapidly-changing environment. Not only can the customer assess its Web sites every time they change, but SaaS also enables rapid software updates as a key part of the delivery model. This means that SaaS code is typically updated every few weeks, as opposed to the normal commercial software development cycle of three to six months. For example, when a new attack vector is identified, a new check can be integrated into the code very rapidly, and within two to three weeks can be deployed in production to the benefit of the entire customer base. That is something only a SaaS solution can offer.
• No additional staff or infrastructure. With a SaaS-based solution, a company does not have to bear the burden of an upfront investment in hardware, software and personnel. Not only is that costly, but, as mentioned above, it is very difficult to accomplish in today’s competitive security hiring environment. And all the costs involved in building a scalable infrastructure and technology are borne by the SaaS provider.
• Ease of implementation and management. A SaaS-based solution is easier to manage than scanning tools. The entire process can be driven via a secure Web-based customer interface, from the scheduling of scans, to the accessing of data, to the remediation of vulnerabilities. Plus, the data is accessible to all relevant constituencies from a centralized portal — 24×7, securely, from anywhere in the world.

The enterprise demands security solutions that are simple, efficient, effective and scalable. In the world of Web site vulnerability management, these benefits are only possible with a SaaS solution.

Companies need to have the ability to assess all of their Web sites on an ongoing basis — they can then free up their in-house resources to focus on fixing vulnerabilities, not just finding them. This is essential if they plan to make real, measurable improvements to their security posture, which is the goal that all companies should be focused on achieving.

CRM News: SaaS: The SaaS Approach to Web Site Vulnerability Management

The Salesforce Summer ‘08 release from Salesforce.com includes a host of new CRM features, many of which are focused on community and collaboration. The Summer ‘08 release shows that Salesforce is continuing to innovate in terms of CRM product functionality, looking at the needs of its users beyond the traditional CRM world.

By Peter Piazza

Salesforce.com previewed its 26th-generation release, Salesforce Summer ‘08, at Dreamforce Europe, its European conference for users and developers. The release includes a host of new CRM features, but it focuses most sharply on new collaboration capabilities.

"Salesforce Summer ‘08 will harness the power of consumer Web technologies to deliver more application and collaboration success than ever before," said George Hu, executive vice president of marketing, applications and education at Salesforce.

New Features for Communities and Collaboration

"Saleforce has recognized that two key things are really driving innovation in CRM today: communities and networking, and collaboration," said Rebecca Wetteman, vice president of research with IT analysts Nucleus Research. Indeed, many of the new features rest on those pillars.

Salesforce Summer ‘08 brings new features to the Salesforce Content pillar to help manage unstructured data in an enterprise by using tagging, subscriptions and recommendations. Other new features for Content include Global Availability, allowing users to perform multilanguage searches; collaboration between Partner and Customer Portals, allowing both groups of users to share relevant content ; and Content Analytics that employ usage metrics to determine the content used most frequently by users, and then optimize the use of those materials.

Salesforce Ideas, an interactive forum that allows users to share and comment on ideas, also received some updates. Companies can use the Multiple Communities feature to create a way of better organizing the ideas emerging from different groups. Users can customize fields and create validation rules and workflows using Customizable Ideas; and the Ideas for Partner Portal gives partners the opportunity to provide their perspectives.

Innovative and Intuitive

Wetteman told us that Salesforce is continuing to innovate in terms of product functionality as well as its notion of platform-as-a-service. "One thing they’ve tried to do is both give developers a way to create applications that are specifically suited to the needs of their users beyond the traditional CRM world," she said, "so it may have a completely different user interface than what we traditionally think of when we look at Salesforce.com, but it all goes back to giving developers tools to create intuitive applications for users." That’s an important edge, she said. "The more intuitive you make an application, the more productive users are."

The new release also includes more than four-dozen new CRM-application features. The company is offering two Salesforce-to-Salesforce connections for free under the Salesforce Partners feature that facilitates partner collaborations. The Dashboard Email Delivery feature automates the updating and delivery of dashboards, which helps Salesforce SFA users to immediately gauge their business’s performance. And Salesforce Marketing provides visibility into leads using the new Converted Lead Page feature, which provides all information regarding a converted lead.

Wetteman said the company is good at providing exactly what customers are looking for, by keeping a close loop with users on the development side and regularly adding new releases. "It’s not like a traditional software cycle where they promise and hope for a date," she said. "They tend to hit [on schedule] and hit with functionality that everyone expects to be there."

The Summer ‘08 release will be available in June at a monthly cost of $35 per user. Salesforce.com claims some 41,000 customers.

CRM Daily | Salesforce.com Offers New Collaboration, Community Tools

On-demand software saves money upfront and offers call centers flexibility to add services and integrate with existing systems, writes Customer Inter@ction Solutions’ Patrick Barnard. With the various options available, small businesses should choose carefully to make sure they’re selecting the best fit for their needs.

By Patrick Barnard

The Software as a Service (SaaS) trend is revolutionizing the call center industry, as companies of all sizes are now discovering the advantages of going with hosted versus on-premise solutions. With SaaS for the call center, applications such as integrated voice recognition, automatic call dialing, predictive dialing, workforce management and CRM are hosted on a shared platform in a data center and delivered to the agents via the Internet or dedicated network.

Because they are completely Web-based, these solutions are quick and easy to deploy — and furthermore require very little upfront investment, as there is usually no additional equipment needed. Because the software is delivered over the Internet "as a service," the traditional software licensing model is replaced with a "subscription" model, or "leasing" model where the software is "rented" based on the amount of time it is used, multiplied by the number of seats. This "pay-as-you-go" model makes today’s SaaS solutions analogous to a utility: You pay for only the amount you use.

Today, there are even affordable Web-based call center solutions geared for small businesses with fewer than 12 agents. Despite their low cost, these solutions don’t skimp on features: They offer many of the same capabilities found in much larger, much more expensive on-premise enterprise systems. Many small companies are already having great success with these hosted solutions and are realizing ROI (return on investment) in a very short time frame.

If you’re running a growing small business and you’re thinking about setting up your own in-house VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) call center to better serve your customers, gain new efficiencies and improve the bottom line, you should definitely consider the SaaS model to meet your call center software needs. The first and most important step is to determine whether the SaaS model is the right fit — for example, some SaaS solutions are better suited to out-bound call or contact centers, where as others are geared for inbound or blended service.

Let’s take a closer look at the advantages today’s SaaS solutions for the call center bring.

Lower Upfront Costs

Generally speaking, the biggest factor driving adoption of SaaS is lower upfront cost. Companies which decide to go with SaaS for their contact center save initially by avoiding the need to shell out capital for on-premise equipment and installation services. In fact, with most of today’s hosted solutions, all you really need to launch a new VoIP call center is a room full of PCs, each with its own high-speed Internet connection, some headsets, the agents — and that’s about it.

Also, SaaS enables companies to avoid having to pay for the licensing of new software in a lump sum — rather, they simply lease the software on a subscription or "pay-as-you-go" basis. Not only is this pricing model more economical, it’s easier to predict and manage, and affords simplified financial reporting: Rather than paying out chunks of capital all at once for upgrades or replacements of on-premise systems, call centers now have the ability to include the cost of their SaaS service as a recurring line item in the monthly operating budget. In addition, the ability to access and use new applications immediately as they become available is a huge cost saver, because it allows call centers to sample new applications as they come out.

Reduced Ongoing Costs

SaaS solutions also deliver lower ongoing costs because typically the provider takes on the maintenance of the system — including software upgrades, equipment replacement and troubleshooting. This reduces the strain on existing IT staff (and if you’re a small business, maybe you don’t have an "IT staff") and also lets companies avoid having to hire specialized IT teams to oversee their VoIP call center system.

Ongoing costs are also reduced because services can be added or customized more quickly, without adding significantly to the overall cost of the service, and without have the vendor’s tech support "truck roll" back to your premise every time a change needs to be made. In fact, most aspects of managing the system, including new software launches, adding new features, adding or adjusting call routing schemes, adding or dropping agents, creating reports, etc., can be handled centrally through a user-friendly, Web-based interface. This means less need for IT support, as call center supervisors and managers can now handle daily management of the system.

SaaS solutions also deliver savings over time because of their high scalability. As a business grows or shrinks in size, and as cycles change based on the economy or the time of year, a hosted system can be correspondingly scaled up and down, based on the amount of volume and the number of agents needed. This flexibility leads to pricing schemes where ongoing cost savings can be easily realized. For example, depending on which service you select, you can pay based on the number of agents you are currently using (i.e. some vendors offer a flat fee for using the software, multiplied by the number of agents). In addition, some vendors are offering pricing on a "per seat" basis, which is particularly beneficial if you happen to run a call center where most of your agents are part time.

Faster Time to Market

This is arguably the biggest advantage of the SaaS model. As mentioned earlier, if you want to get a VoIP call center up and running quickly, SaaS is the way to go, as all you will need only a broadband connection (typically T1/T3 or Ethernet), some computers, some headsets and some agents. The rest is all choosing which software you want to use and configuring it properly. Obviously, this ease of deployment gives SaaS a huge advantage over on-premise systems, which can be costly and time-consuming to set up.

Fast integration with existing IT systems is also where SaaS now has a big advantage. Most vendors are now providing pre-integration for legacy CRM and business systems, which helps the integration piece go a lot smoother. In fact, many systems now offer support for Service Oriented Architecture (SOA), which helps companies save money because they can keep their existing legacy software and servers, yet they can access their customer data the same way they always have. This means the agents have access to any historical data they need while they’re on the line with the customer, and can have it displayed right on their desktop, which in turn leads to better customer service. This is an area where today’s SaaS solutions have made great strides.

Also, with SaaS, "faster time to market" doesn’t just pertain to the time it takes to establish a new VoIP call center — it also pertains to the ease and speed with which one can add new software and services at any time. With SaaS, a company can start out with the basics and then add new apps in piecemeal fashion, thus giving it the ability to quickly adapt to rapidly changing market conditions.

Faster Access to New Technologies

Another major advantage of the SaaS model is the ability to get new software releases as soon as they become available. This means customers can quickly access and try out new applications and beat their competitors to the punch with the deployment of advanced new software which can bring new efficiencies. In addition, SaaS typically means you get the most up-to-date hardware and computing technology — all the way down to the processors used in the servers. Plus, with advanced encryption and security technologies, plus fail-over locations for built-in redundancy, todays data centers are more secure than ever, thus giving companies greater peace of mind.

Enabling the Virtual Contact Center

Another advantage of SaaS solutions is the fact that they are ideal for facilitating the "virtual contact center," a term used to describe a contact center which can be accessed remotely from any computer with a high speed Internet connection. There are many advantages to this architecture, perhaps the most compelling being the ability to use remote or home-based agents, which in recent years has become a very hot trend. With today’s SaaS solutions, remote agents can have calls and other contacts routed to them just as if they were in the main center — plus they have access to all of the same software and features that their coworkers use, including access to legacy systems, "presence" and whatever else has been bundled with the solution. Obviously, this type of architecture is ideal for companies with geographically dispersed centers.

Additionally, the SaaS model enables companies with multiple contact centers to tailor or customize their solution sets for each individual center’s needs. As companies often assign different tasks to different centers, each center typically needs its own suite of software. At the same time, all end points on the network are part of the same unified system, so things like call monitoring, call recording, workforce management and just about any other administrative function can be carried out from a central location for each center, each defined group of agents, or each remote agent.

The SaaS model is also ideal for facilitating the "informal contact center," a relatively new concept in customer service wherein the contact center is extended out to other "knowledge workers" in a company or organization who can handle more complicated customer issues that can’t be handled by an agent. (This where the "pay-as-you-go" pricing model is best applied, as you don’t want to pay by the seat with the "informal contact center" model.)

Improved Agent Efficiency

Today’s SaaS solutions also bring improved efficiency through more intelligent routing of customer contacts. With the SaaS model, contacts can be distributed intelligently among all agents, at all locations, thus leading to vastly improved agent performance. This has obvious benefits for "multimedia" contact centers which handle a range of IP-based channels, such as VoIP, video-over-IP, IVR (interactive voice response), Web chat, text messaging and e-mail. For example, if a particular agent’s phone calls dry up for a period, then that agent can jump in and start taking e-mails or Web chats which are in other queues, instead of just sitting there, waiting for the next call to come in. This intelligent routing of contacts results in economies of scale in terms of agent performance, because each agent’s unique range of skills is put to more efficient use. Furthermore, virtualizing the contact center gives customers a sense that they are contacting a whole, cohesive company — not just the phone department, or the e-mail department, or the Web chat department. And as the experience becomes more seamless, customer satisfaction increases.

High Scalability

SaaS solutions also enable VoIP call centers to more readily handle sudden spikes in call volume. A good example of this is a product recall, where suddenly your contact center gets flooded with complaints from angry customers. But there are more common occurrences, such as an online retailer which does most of its business during the holiday season. As holiday time approaches, a company using SaaS for its contact center can ramp up agent capacity as needed. Yet another example might be a not-for-profit running a fund-raising campaign — or a government agency, such as the IRS — which also see spikes in call volume on a seasonal basis. This ability to scale rapidly is a key advantage which SaaS has over on-premise systems.

Better Control Over Business Rules

SaaS solutions also give companies improved ability to apply business rules across all contact center locations. So, for example, agents can only log onto the system when they’re scheduled to; can only access the applications and network resources they’re allowed to use; or can only contact others within the company based on their "presence" or availability. In addition, contacts can be routed to each agent based on pre-defined, yet fully configurable rules, based on which types of contacts (or customers) that agent is best suited to handle.

As another example, custom scripts can be delivered to a certain agent, to handle a certain call, thus enabling the agent to calm the customer down and resolve the call, or perhaps up-sell and cross-sell at junctures which are determined by management. All of this means companies can create their own unique customer service experiences in order to differentiate themselves from their competitors. That is what makes today’s SaaS solutions a far cry more sophisticated compared to the ASP (application service provider) offerings of a few years ago.

Improved Customer Satisfaction

All of the above advantages combine to create a radically improved customer experience (and agent experience). By virtualizing the contact center — and by unifying all of the software into one cohesive whole — agent performance is improved and customer satisfaction is increased. This not only springs from the fact that agents are able to display all of the relevant information about the customer on their desktops, but also because today’s SaaS systems do a very good job of identifying customers based on their historical data.

For example, a common complaint with many call center systems is that, after the customer enters his or her account information via the IVR, very often the agent has to request that information again (this typically stems from poor integration between the IVR and automatic call distributor). But with today’s advanced solutions, the customer’s information "goes along with them" as their call proceeds through various stages in the call center. By being able to identify the customer, using information from their past purchases and interactions, agents can provide more tailored, or "personalized" service, thus giving the customer a feeling that the company really knows them, and wants their business — not that they’re "just another call in the queue."

CRM News: Getting Started: SaaS: Bringing the Call Center Within a Small Company’s Reach

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