12 Innovate

On my last blog of the 15^th of October on  SaaS marketplaces, I discussed the necessity for SaaS players to have a successful distribution channel. What I didn’t mentioned, was what the role of managed hosting providers could be.

Most of the current hosting providers, just offer classic hosting services, like managed, shared and dedicated hosting, managed firewalls, network services, storage, rack spaces etc. A few made the bridge to offer more advanced service in order to host SaaS providers e.g. www.opsource.net, in the Netherlands www.multrix.nl.

The company Savvis in the USA, takes SaaS-hosting now one step further. Besides infrastructure services for SaaS companies, they also focus on the distribution, offering SaaS providers a marketplace for their services. Managed hosting companies are already trusted advisors for their customers. Customers outsource ‘a part of’ their ICT infrastructure to them, trust them that they can manage the service based on the committed SLA. So it is a logical next step to make.

By offering their current customers a portal towards SaaS-applications, hosting providers create extra value  for SaaS-providers and for their customers. It’s interesting to see of Savvis will be successful and if other providers are taking over this idea.