SaaS Business Architecture
Preliminary Definition Slides 8/15/2009
Copyright© 2009 Sixteen Ventures / Lincoln Murphy. All Rights Reserved.
Conventional SaaS Definitions
“a model of software deployment whereby a provider licenses an application to customers for use as a service on demand.” - Wikipedia “…software that’s developed and hosted by the SaaS vendor and which the end user customer accesses over the Internet. ” - CIO.com
“…subscription based, and all upgrades are provided during the term of the subscription. […] is hosted and updated on a central location, and does not reside on client computers.” - Utah.gov
Copyright© 2009 Lincoln Murphy / Sixteen Ventures. All Rights Reserved.
Problem…
Most conventional definitions of SaaS are meaningless to SaaS vendors and result in industry-wide misunderstandings and confusion
Copyright© 2009 Lincoln Murphy / Sixteen Ventures. All Rights Reserved.
Solution…
Stop trying to fit legacy models into a modern model
Eliminate legacy artifacts and start with what works
Delineate SaaS and its defining characteristics
Introduce the SaaS Business Architecture
Copyright© 2009 Lincoln Murphy / Sixteen Ventures. All Rights Reserved.
SaaS Business Architecture Defined
Marketing
Intellectual Property
SaaS
Technology
Business Model
The SaaS Business Architecture is a commingling of Marketing, Intellectual Property,Technology, and Business Model
Copyright© 2009 Lincoln Murphy / Sixteen Ventures. All Rights Reserved.
Marketing
Inherently Social Unique value proposition
Self-Service focus
Reduce barriers to adoption
Copyright© 2009 Lincoln Murphy / Sixteen Ventures. All Rights Reserved.
Technology
Single Instance in Production Multi-Tenant, implementation agnostic Web-native, UI Agnostic
Customizations break the model
Copyright© 2009 Lincoln Murphy / Sixteen Ventures. All Rights Reserved.
Intellectual Property
Core Application Proprietary Functionality
Cannot be the only focus of developers
Value beyond the core application
Copyright© 2009 Lincoln Murphy / Sixteen Ventures. All Rights Reserved.
Business Model
Inbuilt Revenue Models Not bound by single revenue model Metering, Billing Internal to Application Focused on Business Scalability
Copyright© 2009 Lincoln Murphy / Sixteen Ventures. All Rights Reserved.
SaaS Business
Lincoln Murphy, Managing Director
[email protected] http://sixteenventures.com http://twitter.com/lincolnmurphy http://linkedin.com/in/lincolnmurphy lincolnmurphy (972) 200-9317