It's time for a SaaS supermarket

Looking for enterprise-ready open source tools? Drop by SourceForge or the Google Project Hosting sites and you'll get a pretty comprehensive shopping experience.

Want to peruse the enterprise software as a service market? Well, there's Salesforce.com's AppExchange, but it is limited to the company's ISV ecosystem. For example, if you're looking for a governance, risk and compliance package you'll get 39 results. But they won't include Axentis, which is one of the leading SaaS vendors in the GRC market.

There's something called SaaSPlaza in the Netherlands, but the best I can determine is that it is a channel for Microsoft ISVs moving their apps to the cloud. Last week an Irish hosting provider called SaaSPlex introduced something called WorkClouds, billed as the "first and only true SaaS marketplace." Not to be too snarky about a new business venture, but is the SaaS marketplace really limited to the four apps I was able to find on the WorkClouds SaaS Store?

With Microsoft trying to herd its SaaS developers in one direction, Google in another and Salesforce.com hoarding its ISVs in AppExchange, the wannabe SaaS user in search of an all-encompassing SourceForge-like shopping experience is out in the cold.

How hard would it be for an enterprising Web business to gather information from sites like AppExchange, SaaSPlaza, Google AppEngine and elsewhere into a single site, a true global SaaS supermarket? The info is out there. It needs aggregation.