With months of program design, speaker recruitment and content promotion coming to an end, SaaScon program co-chairs Paul Gillin and Eric Norlin kick back and little and talk about the lessons they've learned about this dynamic new market. Bottom line: they both think it's going to be a really big deal.

Listen to the podcast  (or right click and choose "save"  to download).  Time: 17:28.

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Markets are really ecosystems when you think about it. There are predators, prey, hosts, scavengers, symbiosis and food chains. When you think of software markets this way, it casts some of the choices that you have to make in a different light. In this podcast, Chris Hoffman, an 18-year technology industry veteran, describes his vision for what he calls an evolving SaaS ecosystem and tells why it's important to make some wise choices about leading vendors at the front end. Read mo

As the software-as-a-service market grows, centers of influence will emerge. These "solar systems" will have major vendors at the center with many smaller SaaS providers orbiting around them, providing vertical-industry or value-added services. Users need to know how this market will evolve so they can choose their strategic vendors wisely. Chris Hoffman, an 18-year technology industry veteran, describes his vision for what he calls an evolving SaaS ecosystem.

Chris Hoffman is an 18-year technology industry veteran. He has held various executive roles at IBM Global Services, GE, Gartner and several startups. Triple-Tree is an eight-year-old boutique investment bank with strong foundations in research and a focus on technology, business services and health care.

SaaS requires a fundamentally different approach to provisioning and supporting software. The computing infrastructure must not only be a robust, 24X7 framework, but the software platform needs to provide a high degree of security, data integrity and flexibility to accommodate the needs of multiple users with different priorities. In this preview of their Sept. 25, 2006 session at SaaScon, Gianpaolo Carraro and Fred Chong of Microsoft discuss the work they've done defining different classes of multi-tenant architectures and offer advice customers can use in negotiating service level agreements.

Listen to the podcast (right click and choose "save"  to download).  Time: 18:08

Are you who you say you are? Online, it’s hard to tell. And when a user is authorized to access maybe a dozen or more applications - and different features on each one - identity management becomes quite a challenge. Dick Hardt is focusing on solving the problem of building identity management systems that are flexible, scalable and easy to use. In this Q & A interview he previews his upcoming SaaScon, presentation, “Identity Management In An Outsourced World,” and talks about why the move to SaaS is making this issue more compelling.

Listen to the podcast (right click and choose "save"  to download).  Time: 16:18

The rising popularity of software-as-a-service will force traditional vendors to change their business models and present users with a host of new options. SaaS is a completely different way to think about software and users should expect consolidation and confusion as the market adjusts to this new reality. Applications that are natural for SaaS are those requiring little customization. As their scope grows, so does the complexity. But expect new vendors to spring up that handle integration tasks and back-end processing for SaaS vendors as the industry restructures. In this wide-ranging interview, Amy D. Wohl, President of Wohl Associates, discusses the changes facing the software industry and her upcoming SaaScon presentation: "Ten Questions To Ask A SaaS Vendor."

Listen to the podcast (right click and choose "save"  to download) Time: 16:40

Software-as-a-service will become businesses’ preferred way to deploy new applications because the business people like it so much, says Phil Wainewright, a pioneer in the SaaS industry and author of an influential blog on the subject. In an interview previewing his upcoming presentation at SaaScon, Sept. 25-26 in San Francisco, Wainewright says IT organizations are hesitant to adopt SaaS because they fear change and loss of control. But they need to get on the bandwagon or risk losing the confidence of their business-side colleagues. Security and data ownership concerns are red herrings, Wainewright says. SaaS is simply a superior model for most applications.

Listen to the podcast (right click and choose "save"  to download) Time: 14:24

Many people still look at the ROI of software-as-a-service (SaaS) in terms of cost savings, but the bigger benefits may accrue from better user interfaces, faster ramp-up times and improved access to information, says Tom Kelly, who works with corporate clients on their SaaS strategies. Mr. Kelly believes SaaS applications do have some current scalability limits but are well-suited for all but the largest ERP installations. 

In this podcast interview, Mr. Kelly introduces some of the issues he will present at SaaScon, the business-to-business event for software-as-a-service, coming up Sept 25 and 26 in San Francisco.

Listen to the podcast (right click and choose "save"  to download) Time: 14:24

Dr. Timothy Chou knows a few things about the software business and he foresees the move to software-as-a-service as the end of software as we know it.

In this podcast interview, Dr. Chou will preview his opening keynote remarks at SaaScon, the business-to-business event for software-as-a-service, coming up Sept 25 and 26 in San Francisco.

Bill McNee is founder of Saugatuck Technology, the influential analyst firm that has chronicled the development of the software-as-a-service market since the early days. He sees SaaS becoming a major disruptive force in the software industry with its promise of lower costs and more flexible deployment and maintenance. And it's going to to happen faster than we expect.

In this podcast interview, McNee says we're entering the era of SaaS 2.0. This will be characterized by richer SaaS architectures built around a service orientation, unbundling of hosting and integration services to specialized vendors and the development of application portfolios by leading SaaS players.

The benefits of software-as-a-service (SaaS) can go way beyond cost savings. Implemented as part of an application strategy, SaaS can improve communications with business partners, transform information flow within organizations and create unprecedented flexibility in application deployment and customization. In this first segment of the SaaS Revolution Podcast series, SaaS expert Jeff Kaplan discusses the phenomenal growth in contributions to his SaaS Showplace and Managed Service Showplace resource directories, new SaaS application areas and the promise of SaaS to remake corporate IT architectures. Kaplan argues persuasively that SaaS is no less than the beginning of a new era in enterprise applications and that the trend has already spread well beyond its small-business roots. Download the podcast.