Ebook: How To Start Up A Software Business Within A Cloud Computing Environment: An Evaluation Of Aspects From A Business Development Perspective : An Evaluation Of Aspects From A Business Development Perspective

The author is beyond excited about the potential that comes from new ventures. One of the key characteristics of successful entrepreneurs is courage, but courage only is most often far too little and can end up in a fiasco soon. The author is convinced that there is a set of rules that is valid for most companies. Knowledge and usage of this set of rules could make an entrepreneurs life much easier. The key question within this book is: 'What aspects of business development are of tremendous importance for Software as a Service start up companies?' In order to find some answers to this question the author defined a pattern by outlining his findings within a fictional company called CashOnePro. Auszug aus dem Text Text Sample: Chapter 1, Introduction: Background: The entire software and information technology industry is currently facing a change of paradigm as the era of traditional business software is facing a massive theoretical shift and many common software offerings will be transformed into software service. These circumstances will not only influence the way companies develop software, moreover it will have drastic impacts on entire business models (Saugatuck, 2010). Software as a Service (SaaS) is part of the cloud computing concept and mixes up business-to-business offerings with a consumer-oriented approach (Gross, 2010). Former well-defined limitations between business-to-business and business-to-consumer products have become softer. Users of software and services typically favor well-designed software in terms of both usability and appearance. Experts often mention the terminus “consumerization of IT” in this context (Gross, 2010). Nowadays consumers are in constant touch with software and applications and consumer-oriented applications are typically more standardized, better looking and easier to use than business applications. A typical SaaS offering exists physically just once on one cloud platform and is run in a multi-tenancy environment (Koenig, 2006). In other words this means that there is just one physical version of software that is delivered to all customers. To provide better understanding, Software as a Service (SaaS) is being delivered in a similar way like conventional websites, where every visitor comes to see physically the same website. This new concept of distributing Software as a Service requires a high level of standardization, which is reasonable due to the fact that the target group should be as large as possible and therefor the scope for individualization and customizing is decreasing enormously. Experts are apprehensive that standardization will be enforced to the disadvantage of the level of customization (Schwartz, 2005), and this is just one indicator that the entire software industry is in a state of flux. Another indicator is that one of the most common business models in software business, which consists of a unique license fee plus annual service fees, will be replaced by a variety of pay-as-you-go payment plans. New payment options and dynamic usage plans are just one result of a big change in software business. The market entry barriers into the software industry for new businesses are lower than ever before. On the other hand the way to a Software as a Service (SaaS) offering for an existing Individual Software Vendor (ISV) is not that easy because it goes hand in hand with a couple of risks for their existing business. From the viewpoint of an Individual Software Vendor it is important to find the right mixture of business development aspects and adjust their priorities in accordance with the SaaS offering. Aims and Objectives: When establishing a SaaS business the most important aspects of business development probably come from the common business models in the software industry, because SaaS and the concept of cloud computing brings many new opportunities, such as scalability, internationalization and marketing-driven sales as well as with a large number of variations; for instance, a higher cash intake over time instead of a high upfront license sell-off (Ratameta & Veeragandham, 2009, pp. 17 - 21). A new venture will have to consider several factors for a long period before they start to be productive, like stressing the opportunity, creating a sustainable team of creators and followers, setting up strategies and much more (Copeland & Om Malik, 2006, pp. 78 - 81). The objective of this book was to find out on what aspects of business development successful ventures starting their business particularly in a cloud computing environment paid more attention to and their relevance to start up companies in the software business. The current research was authored to assess what aspects of business development are essential to create a successful SaaS venture and where SaaS business creation differs from the traditional way of software business creation in relation to an on-premise software approach. The analysis concentrated on both research methods and professional ways of proceeding. The data collected was carried out by merging information that was gathered out of evaluating a questionnaire with IT decision-makers on the buyer’s side and compiling a case study with a successful SaaS vendor. This book focused on the need of new ventures to make decisions in respect of a potential cloud / SaaS strategy. The investigated aspects of business development were primarily corporate strategy, product development, marketing, sales (with a special focus on pricing strategies and models), distribution and the special aspects of business acceleration. On the other side, it was important to find out what successful companies left undone with intent, as Porter (cited in Oblinger, 2011) stated that it is more important for a company´s strategy to know what not to do instead of what to do. It was an indispensable requirement for this book to research a company that has a SaaS offering available and runs a scalable business (Shane & Kataraman, 2000, p. 223). Founders of start ups need to make decisions about further investments over a long period of time before they see if their new venture is failing or succeeding (Jay & Gregory, p. 391), which requires professional business development. This project should help us to understand what aspects of business development are crucial and what negative effects can emerge when business development is neglected. Amongst other things it has to be clarified whether successful ventures defined their product/service and if tools like the Six Sigma Product Development Circle (Wilson, 2005, p. 62), TQ/TQM and Lean (Bhasin, 2006, p. 56) were helpful. In addition to the variables named above, which can have an impact on the success or failure of a venture, a further objective of this project was to understand whether some aspects of business development were not just very important to the company, but especially accelerated the organization because of their Software as a Service offering (SaaS). I hope to answer the question: "What aspects of business development do entrepreneurs of Software as a Service start up companies regard as the most important?" In that aim, the following research questions were helpful: What business models work well for a SaaS start up? What characteristics show markets and target groups that are suited to SaaS offerings? What kinds of new opportunities come along with the offering of Software as a Service? Which marketing and sales approaches have produced better results? How important is uniqueness in relation to the business concept? What steps of common business planning are the most important? Methodological approach The method is all about researching successful businesses. The author researched a company that can be described as a successful start up with a successful SaaS offering. To get a better understanding of their key success factors, the author completed a couple of introductory interviews with the founders, account managers, partners, potential customers and customers. Furthermore the company provided the author with detailed background information, financial information, business plans and strategy papers. This information was aggregated into a case study. For the purpose of anonymity and nondisclosure the company is called CashOnePro, whereby this name is a fancy name. Furthermore the author collected qualitative data from interviews with purchasing decision-makers in the software business. The qualitative data includes specific answers to major questions regarding Software as a Service (SaaS) as well as traditional questions concerning on-premise software – especially regarding differences in decision making, customers’ expectations, viewpoints and best practices – in order to increase the value of the results. The research was made up of 35 interviews with attendees of 2012 CeBIT – one of the world’s largest exhibitions for software and information technology Biographische Informationen Thomas W. Buchegger is CEO at ‘TrendWorker’ and CFO at ‘runtime software`’. His main focus is strategy execution, business development, entrepreneurship, finance and legal aspects. Before becoming a chief executive, he worked as an external consultant for business development in several online marketing companies. He holds an MBA in entrepreneurship at University of Liverpool and a Bachelor in Management and International Business at University of Graz. During his professional career he was working with a large number of IT companies, Cloud Computing providers and Software As A Service vendors in Europe as well as in the USA.