A friend forwarded me an article (thanks!) that covered a recently published study on SaaS adoption. The punch line is that small to medium-size businesses (SMBs) are becoming more sophisticated in their technology purchases and are embracing solutions such as software as a service (SAAS) and managed services. The survey found nearly 30 percent of them plan to implement SAAS solutions in 2010 to lower costs and maintain their competitive edge.

“SMBs are placing increasing importance on technology solutions that drive revenues, produce immediate results to the bottom line and have a direct, positive impact on the customer’s experience.”

Obviously we love to hear that SaaS solutions continue to resonate and it makes a ton of sense that small and medium sized businesses will leverage SaaS services given low cost of entry, limited overhead support requirements, ease of use etc. This of course leads you to larger customers…what about them? Larger customers would get the same benefits right? Well yes, but they also have more scale and perhaps can do it on their own, they have existing solutions, and importantly they also likely have people (with jobs and a voice) managing dedicated solutions in place.  So that means a solution needs to drive significantly more value to be worthy of consideration.

In Managed Video as a Service we see (and our customers agree) this ‘extra’ value that can compel larger customers to adopt. We actually have developed a prescribed pilot process that quantifiably demonstrates the value to customers.  Frequently first hand proof is required to compel larger customers to pull the trigger so that is what we give them. How many larger companies today have initiatives that can drive 10-15% gross profitability improvement? I would hope that would get the attention of any CEO regardless of size. To be candid the returns are better than that. To date we haven’t even attempted to quantify the longer term strategic benefits that Managed Video can supply (e.g. brand consistency, best practice training etc.). Its not that you can’t quantify it, it just takes longer and may provide more room for debate. Here at Envysion, we work with both large and small customers.  For the large ones we look forward to demonstrating why now is the time to move to MVaaS.