By Teresa Jones, Senior Research Analyst, Butler Group

With the rise in Software as a Service (SaaS) applications - ranging from Customer Relationship Management (CRM) to desktop applications - one could be forgiven for thinking that you can just sign up to use them and away you go. While on an individual level this may be the case, for organizations of all shapes and sizes it is still highly likely that services will still be needed to ensure that the deployment runs smoothly.

The main problem with this services requirement is that the provider of the SaaS offering usually has limited professional services resources - and of course many SaaS offerings become used around the world very quickly. Just as an example, in a recent briefing with Salesforce.com, the company mentioned that it has some users in countries where it does not have offices - these customers are obviously quite happy with that but when deployment support is needed this can be a challenge to provide remotely. Salesforce.com does, of course, have a Web site dedicated to help customers get the most out of their CRM deployments.

Some people have identified a niche in the market to provide just such support for SaaS applications, and set up companies to do so. An example is Saaspoint (which used to be called Enterprise CRM) that provides implementation assistance, integration, configuration, and even some add-on capabilities specifically for Salesforce.com (although it has also recently announced a partnership with Business Objects for its on-demand reporting offering). Saaspoint takes advantage of Salesforce.com's AppExchange on-demand platform for hosting applications, and provides an application for estate agents (PropertyPoint), and for mobile field scheduling. However, its main emphasis at present is still on the services side of the business.

Companies like NetSuite, a provider of on-demand Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) and CRM software, have gone down the partner route from early days, by working with regional partners in the countries where they have opened offices. The partner provides implementation services for customers (usually in conjunction with NetSuite) thus helping to expand the services that are needed to ensure successful deployment.

A more recent announcement comes from Google and Capgemini, who have formed a partnership around Google Apps. Capgemini is offering its desktop infrastructure and application support services to enterprise customers of Google Apps Premium Edition, while Capgemini will also resell Google Apps.

Software provided as a service has significant benefits to those organizations, not least in that they need little or no internal infrastructure to support and upgrade them. However, the providers of those SaaS applications still need partners to work with customers to deliver training, deployment services, and even support if they are to expand internationally. ENS