Comments on: Telcos and SaaS, a happy fit…

By: Another telco creates a SaaS aggregation platform at diversity.net.nz

Another telco creates a SaaS aggregation platform at diversity.net.nz — Tue, 24 Jun 2008 19:16:10 +0000

[...] to see that, fresh after the British Telecom move into creating a SaaS aggregation platform, Telstra has done similarly for Australia. The idea is [...]

By: Ben Kepes

Ben Kepes — Sun, 04 May 2008 22:56:05 +0000

There are some shared benefits to a Telco/SaaS partnership
1) For SaaS companies they get brand, marketing spend and access to potential customers
2) For telco’s in this environment of huge threats to their business viability they get some protection of core revenue plus some benefits around the power of the network and community effects

By: Telcos and SaaS - Interesting Article | julian101.com - ProWorkflow - Project Management Software CEO's Blog

Sun, 04 May 2008 22:47:56 +0000

[...] just read an interesting article over at http://diversity.net.nz/ about Telcos and SaaS business that caught my attention. It’s an area of interest globally [...]

By: Julian Stone

Julian Stone — Sun, 04 May 2008 22:39:02 +0000

I’ll be interesting to see how the Telcos approach the SaaS model. Contrary to popular belief, SaaS is hard work and many players don’t have large margins – especially early stage SaaS players as they’re spending heavy in Marketing/Dev to get established. Even SalesForce is still working on improving margins…

So how can a Telco partner with a tight margined SaaS player? It’ll be interesting to watch these Telco/SaaS M&A&P’s over time.

Google/Salesforce is a good example of two different models coming together (Sales model vs Free model) – but would a similar deal be struck with a telco?

Unsure… They could be a technology partner sure, but could they be a software partner? if sales or support (or custom dev) were moved from the SaaS business to the Telco, would the service to customers be lessened? I don’t know if the Telco would have the same product knowledge/passion/experience to deliver equivalent service to a SaaS’s current service?

I mean, you can’t have a Telco support or sales worker working on Internet plans, or dialup packages, then switching to CRM product support…

The Telco would need a specialist team for a ‘service’ partnership to be feasible. and then if they have a specialist team, what becomes of the SaaS company’s role? Does it revert to a simple R&D focus? If so, then there’s an issue that R&D & dev teams are removed from customer frontend, so the product development angle suffers…

Telco and SaaS business in partnership. Whilst I like the idea of marketing a solution down the Telco’s channel, there are some questions:

1. What’s in it for the Telco (Because the revenue won’t cover the cost for them)
2. What’s in it for the SaaS (Because service and Product dev may suffer)

Just my thoughts. I’m open to ideas on this.