Everyone is talking about cloud computing and Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) these days. Almost every technology vendor has announced a cloud strategy – even the traditional software zealots. But what do cloud computing and SaaS mean for product managers? The impacts are more significant than you may think. From pricing and profitability measurement to sales and marketing, cloud is having a noteworthy influence on the day-to-day activities of product managers.
2. What is Cloud Computing? “A standardized IT capability (services, software or infrastructure) delivered via Internet technologies in a pay-per-use, self-service way” “Cloud computing is Internet-based computing, whereby shared resources, software, and information are provided to computers and other devices on demand like the electricity grid.” Source: Forrester Source: Wikipedia
3. Confusion Abounds “The interesting thing about cloud computing is that we've redefined cloud computing to include everything that we already do.” “I can't think of anything that isn't cloud computing with all of these announcements.” Larry Ellison CEO Oracle Oracle World 2008
12. Impacts on Product Management “No member of the development effort faces greater change in moving into the SaaS world than the product manager.” “Not only are on-demand products different from their on-premise counterparts, but the development processes required to create, maintain and enhance a SaaS product are different. SaaS Dictates Different Product Management Priorities – November 2008
13.
14. Flawed understanding of customer's requirements increases likelihood that product fails in market
15.
16. Users can vote to promote ideas for inclusion in upcoming release
17. Instead of holding big meetings to wrangle over features, developers can move forward knowing what people want Salesforce.com Idea Exchange
18. Try Before You Buy “Conspicuous Value” - Value proposition must be immediately obvious, without a salesperson standing at customer's shoulder to explain Customer should be able to demo a product, move to sandbox, and take online training in a matter of days
19.
20. You can’t spend enough time with the customer to help with his education, and that means he’s on his own more often.
21. The customer isn’t paused until the next sales meeting, waiting to be feted and wowed by your solution selling greatness.
23. He’s on the Internet, researching, browsing your website, browsing your competitors websites.Everyone is Researching Products & Price on the Internet These Days Nick Van Weerdenburg http://testdrivenmarketing.com/286/is-sales-become-marketing-technical-support
33. Add-ons - new modules, storage, supportMany Pricing Models Emulate Mobile Phone Schemes
34. Implementation Fees Most significant cost outlays for providers occur upon activation or installation of the service Customers seeking to preserve cash and avoid large upfront payments Attracts customers with weak financial viability or poor credit history
35. Contract Terms Customers want the flexibility to terminate contracts and switch to alternative vendors Investors want the predictability of long-term contracts with monthly recurring revenues and highly visible backlogs
36.
37.
38. When prices go back down automatically restart“Pork-Belly” Commodities Pricing
52. Supporting Customization “This public cloud business is only a sustainable business model if a provider …does not follow the demand of its largest customers to offer more customized solutions” Source: Forrester Research - The Evolution of Cloud Computing Markets (July 2010) Big Customers Want to Bully Vendors
53. Service Interruptions Workday's SaaS for human resources, financial applications and payroll was down for 15 hours September 2009 Amazon EC2 cloud disruption in Northern Virginia data center for 5 hours December 2009 Google 2 hour 20 minute outage for all enterprise applications due to power failure February 2010 Overheating problem in Wikipedia's European data center caused 1 hour global outage March 2010 Intuit Turbotax, Quickbooks Online, Quicken online sites for 36 hours June 2010
87. Additional Resources http://www.pragmaticmarketing.com/publications/topics/08/saas-product-management http://www.forrester.com/rb/Research/saas_dictates_different_product_management_priorities/q/id/45055/t/2 http://www.quantumwhisper.com/product-management-tidbits/bid/19051/SaaS-Product-Management-Challenges http://techprodo.com/wordpress/?p=92 http://blog.softwareinsider.org/2009/10/12/research-report-customer-bill-of-rights-software-as-a-service/ http://www.forrester.com/rb/Research/how_secure_is_cloud/q/id/45778/t/2 http://chaotic-flow.com/saas-competitive-advantage-saas-economics-101-e-book/ Pragmatic Marketing Forrester Research Product Management Tidbits TechprodoBlogspot Altimeter Group Forrester Research Chaotic Flow SaaS Product Management SaaS Dictates Different Product Management Priorities SaaS Product Management Challenges SaaS Product Management – Is there a Difference? Customer Bill of Rights – Software as a Service How Secure is Your Cloud? SaaS Economics 101
88. Contact Details More Thoughts on Product Marketing & Product Management Blog – http://outsideinmarketing.wordpress.com Twitter - @stevekeifer SlideShare – http://www.slideshare.net/stevekeifer LinkedIn – http://www.linkedin.com/in/stevekeifer
time to market - operational in a few months, weeks or days rather than 1/2-2 year deploymentease of use - approachable graphical user interfacecomplexitylower cost of ownership - no investments in software, hardware or additional IT resources; shift from capital expenditure to predictable operating costseamless upgrades - do not require overhauling prior versions, supporting legacy versions, rewriting system interfaces
Liberal interpretation of the definitionexamples of usage- project based needs- development and testing environment- simulations- new startups- batch jobs- trade-strategy backtesting
Time to marketEase of useLower TCOHassle free upgrades
In some respects is harder Product requirements- SaaS applications are not easily customized- Flawed understanding of customer's requirements increases likelihood that SaaS product fails in marketResponsibility for collecting requirements, analyzing what they mean, converting into development priorities bear an even greater responsibilitySoftware can be customized by systems integratorHardware can be customized by a VARAfter upgrade every user on system will experience- usability problems- unwanted feature complexity- functionality gaps immediately.Product manager has greater responsibility for preventing upgrade errors- More detailed use cases, personas to measure design/value of new features
In some respects is easierSaaS Requirements Gathering- can be gathered directly from the customer- discussion forums, blogs or within application itself- augment traditional sources - customer interviews, surveysIs anyone doing this?usage tracking built-in to the product- time users spend; path taken through the application- track ROI from usage statistics on particular featuresis anyone doing this?communities of customers to share ideas- example Yammer
Conspicuous value- Value proposition must be immediately obvious, without a salesperson standing at customer's shoulder to explain- coolness factor- quick benefits- pain points highlighted in use cases or personas- built-in customer tutorials or training- TCO modelsTry before you buy- implementation moves from months to weeks- demo a product, move to sandbox, train in days
Lower gross marginsDon’t have a systems integrator who will invest time in sellingCannot pay same commission rates for new business
Financial expectations- Less capital investment- Scale gracefully according to demand- Fund more projects simultaneously- Total cost of ownership should be lowerAdvantages to CFOs- cash-flow friendly alternative to on-premise installation- financing alternative to one of the bastions of corporate capital expenditures: IT- operating expense that can be scaled up to meet rising business need or downscaled- on-premise is sunk cost that includes capex which must be carried on balance sheet as an asset that loses value as it depreciates- no balance sheet implications - no impact for return on assets- avoid taking on debt and keeping cash in company longer- IT can not offer predictability on what it will cost to add a user or process another transaction- preserve cash, incur no additional debt- enhance balance sheet strength and credit rating - direct more capital into revenue generating activities
pay-as-you-grow- commitment model with lower prices- pay-as-you-go with no commitment- subscription based pricing with no capacity tiers or restrictions?- Volume discounts as usage scales up- do you charge for additional modules- offer price protection options to lock in consumption guarantees - move between pricing bands at different points in time- comes a point at which usage-based pricing exceeds costs of purchasing software/hardware and operating- virtualized server - 12 to 96 cents per hour - CPU and related resourcesusage-based metrics- transactions- users- documents- purchase orderssubscription models- size of company - revenue or employees- casual versus power users- per business entity- bracketed tiers- tiered upon functionalityadd-ons- storage quantity limited- support options may vary
what to charge for upfront implementation fees or to waive?require minimum contract commitments or cancel at any time
Contract terms- known bugs, integration, performance and availability deficiencies- clear policies on storage use- disclosure of physical location- data management requirements- regulatory compliance- provide report on key availability and continuity metrics- transparency to financials- disaster recovery plans- license convers servicesion from on-premise to SaaS and back; equivalency ratios- freedom of speech to discuss issues with other clients- software escrow - custodians for source code, user data- commit to delivering APIs, web services- access to majority owned affiliates- combine contracts during mergers & acquisitions- transition and migration assistance- option to purchase the source code?
amazon ec2 spot instances- priced based upon supply and demand- demand is low and supply is high - instances cost a fraction of a cent per hour- supply is low and demand is high - instances cost more than a regular instance- set price caps for spot instances - automatically shut down once reaching threshold- when prices go back down automatically restart
Enterprise software- Constant increases in maintenance fees without corresponding increases in delivered valueInfrequent and expensive upgradesSAP upgrade is a material event to be reported to investorswhen to perform upgrades- expecting faster time to market***- must upgrade more frequently than traditional cycles- leverage agile development methodologies- access to latest features, bug fixes, regulatory updates at quick pace- venture capital expectations for new functionalitykey issues- Cisco - no end of quarter downtime- Switch from long requirements documents to on-going conversation, verbally or through written formats- how to patch bug fixes, security issues- agile development and SaaS both offer faster release iterations and greater responsiveness
The biggest challenge is that all customers must be upgraded at the same timeConcept of multitenant
Multi-tenant environment not designed for customizationKills the whole model of standardized infrastructure and applicationsyour customer does not understand cloud computing or SaaS- cherry pick the benefits of cloud; but retain the flexibility of "your mess for less" outsourcing
# of high profile outagesGreater visibility due to size and scope of outageService Level agreements- Customers have expectations of higher uptime and availability- Robust, massively redundant infrastructure of cloud- Outages are higher profile affecting broad range of customers
Success is built on trust. And trust starts with transparency. Trust.salesforce.com is the salesforce.com community’s home for real-time information on system performance and security. On this site you'll find:-Live and historical data on system performance -Up-to-the minute information on planned maintenance -Phishing, malicious software, and social engineering threats -Best security practices for your organization -Information on how we safeguard your data
Contract terms- known bugs, integration, performance and availability deficiencies- clear policies on storage use- disclosure of physical location- data management requirements- regulatory compliance- provide report on key availability and continuity metrics- transparency to financials- disaster recovery plans- license converts servicesion from on-premise to SaaS and back; equivalency ratios- freedom of speech to discuss issues with other clients- software escrow - custodians for source code, user data- commit to delivering APIs, web services- access to majority owned affiliates- combine contracts during mergers & acquisitions- transition and migration assistance- option to purchase the source code?
integration to 3rd party APIs and web services- customer's enterprise systems behind the firewalladditional plug-ins, widgets, web services to enrich the applicationUse to augment in-house applications
Subscription fees generate 80% of revenuesLess revenue from professional services (20%)Lower R&D costs (10-25% of revenues)Higher cost of sales and marketingLower margins than hardware or enterprise softwareGrowth of existing accountsMinimal churn and down-flexing
investor's proclivity for recurring revenue models-new metrics- cash flow- backlog- bookings/billings- deferred revenuesQRev[X] = Quarterly Recurring Revenue for period XQRev[X-1] = Quarterly Recurring Revenue for the period preceding XExpSM[X-1] = Total Sales and Marketing Expense for the period preceding XMagic Number = (QRev[X] – Qrev[X-1])*4/ExpSM[X-1]