Software as a Service (SaaS) is Today's Leading Requirement

At an event Sun hosted recently, one room was filled with CTOs from some of the world's largest on-line companies; the room next door was filled with CIOs -- from a broad spectrum of companies from China, Japan, Europe and North America. As Mr. Schwartz spoke with attendees from each room, he noticed that not a single company in the CTO room paid for software. They were interested in open source or software-as-a-service (SaaS) alternatives. In contrast, not a single company in the CIO room allowed free software without a commercial support contract. Not one.

There are two clear implications for ISVs. First, the time to move to the SaaS business model is yesterday. Your customers are asking for it; your competitors are offering it; it gives you a way to grow subscription revenue and move your service offering to the SMB market at the same time. Second, the cost of downtime is an overarching concern for customers. If you can deliver your software as a service, on demand, with extremely high levels of availability, you can win over both the CIO and the CTO.

Sun can help. And Callidus Software, a Sun ISV partner, provides an excellent example of how it can work.

Giving your Customers What they Want

Callidus Software produces sales performance management (SPM) solutions. More than 1.8 million sales professionals use the company's solution worldwide. In 2006, the company decided to make a move into the on demand, SaaS business as a strategic direction to grow their potential available market by expanding into the SMB (small-medium business) space. Operationally, Callidus Software didn't want to devote precious engineering resources to manage the infrastructure required to offer their application on demand, so they needed to find a partner who would.

In search of a potential infrastructure provider, Callidus Software identified players that could meet stringent requirements such as security, operational scalability, and platform reliability. After a very thorough investigation, Callidus Software chose Sun. "Sun was the most cost-effective solution," said Jeff Saling, vice president of Callidus Software On-Demand, "but what really swung the deal was Sun's willingness to partner with us as we designed the environment for Callidus Software On-Demand."

Virtualized Tenancy Means no Re-architecture is Required

Together Sun and Callidus Software developed an innovative SaaS solution in which Sun manages the server and network infrastructure and Callidus Software manages its own applications. Using the advanced features of the Solaris OS, such as Solaris Containers, Sun and Callidus Software designed a virtualized utility architecture in which each customer environment is placed in an individual Solaris Container. This approach isolates customers from each other to maintain a high level of security. Callidus Software had heard from the industry that they would have to re-architect their application to a multi-tenancy architecture to compete effectively on demand. By leveraging virtualization technology freely built into Solaris, Callidus Software was able to go to market with their existing single-tenancy architecture while still sharing the production infrastructure amongst their many customers. Sun calls this Virtualized Tenancy.

After testing the approach in a proof-of-concept, Callidus Software quickly moved into production and brought its first customer on-line in August, 2006. Since then, the company has easily exceeded its original estimate for the number of subscribers. Callidus Software On-Demand has gone from 0 to 44,000 subscribers from more than 120 countries in just 18 months, and expansion continues.

High availability has been a key factor in this growth, with the Sun server infrastructure averaging 99.96 percent availability.

Sun's Solaris On Demand Program for ISVs Removes the Risks Associated with SaaS

"The combination of Sun technology and Sun Managed Services has been invaluable," said Mr. Saling. "The Sun technology is a very solid base for our business, and the services team has worked as a fully invested partner since the beginning, helping us launch in five months and responding quickly as we innovate and grow."

If you agree that it's time to take a closer look at the SaaS model, take a closer look at the Solaris On Demand Program for ISVs from Sun. Sun can help ISVs make the transition with your existing application -- with no rewrites -- to the SaaS model quickly and with no up-front costs.

And if you're worried that your single-tenant application will have to be re-architected to multi-tenancy for SaaS, let Sun introduce you to Virtualized Tenancy. With Solaris Containers you can virtualize your existing single-tenancy applications and avoid re-architecting your application.