Socialtext Teams Up with Cloud Computing Vendors to Promote Benefits of SaaS

Last week, Socialtext CEO Eugene Lee teamed up with our friends at Box.net and other cloud computing vendors to promote the benefits of Software as a Service (SaaS). The video — entitled “Will You Choose the Cloud?” — highlights the many advantages of SaaS that we hear from our customers everyday, including:

• Fast innovation cycles; upgrades to software happen in days or weeks — not years
• Accessing your business applications on any device
• Reducing friction to collaborate with customers and partners

At Socialtext, we look at “the cloud” rather pragmatically. While we have a hosted service that runs Socialtext in our data centers for many of our customers, we also offer a SaaS appliance that can be deployed either behind a customer’s firewall or in our data center. The Socialtext appliance provides all the benefits of SaaS because we patch upgrades remotely, but customers get the added security of having everything located inside their own corporate firewalls. Regardless of the deployment option customers choose, they pay for the software on a subscription basis.

From our perspective, SaaS encourages strong alignment between vendors and their customers. Since we have to earn our customers’ business fresh every year, we must ensure that we’re delivering software that helps them solve critical business challenges and respond to new opportunities. With modular software, customers have the option to introduce (and pay for) one capability at a time. For example, many customers choose to deploy microblogging first, then introduce the deeper value of other social software products later.

We encourage you to watch the video and check out the website ichoosethecloud.com to see the benefits companies get when they embrace SaaS.

cloud computing, enterprise social software, SaaS

---

Comments (0)