The news says SaaS provided IT management vendor Klir is closing up:
As a venture-backed startup, [James] Maiocco [CEO] said, it is tough to switch gears.
“You are not a conglomerate that can afford to pursue six different business models,” he said. “You are placing a bet on a business model, and you can’t go out after that business model half-heartedly. You have to attack it intensely, which we did. Unfortunately, pursuing our business through a direct sales model was just not cost-effective. So by the time we repositioned the technology and changed gears to a software-as-a-service distribution model, we just ran out of gas in the tank.”
Klir is (“was,” I guess) interesting in the IT management space as both providing IT management as a service (over the web) and as one of the offerings furthest along wit the idea of collaborative IT management.
I hadn’t managed to do a write-up about Klir yet, but I’ve definitely mentioned them in regards to the co-creation stuff they were doing inside their product. Check out this note from Microsoft’s Cliff Reeves.
Interestingly, I find more and more IT management people realizing the benefits of collaborative IT management, both at large and small vendors. Once “raw IT management info” — be it “telemetry,” trouble-shooting (a wikipedia of sysadmin’ing), or best practices — more and more IT management folks have been trying to take a stab at the idea.
Technorati Tags: klir, collaborativeitmanagement, collabsysmgmt, saas, itmanagement
SaaS is the way to go. It is easy to buy because there are usually no capital expenses up front (e.g. servers, software licenses, installation). It’s usually pay as you go, and it is an operating expense. If you run low on cash, you can usually ratchet back without huge penalties.
It is good for providers too because it provides a recurring revenue stream. It’s a lot easier to plan a business around recurring revenue streams.
Working for a SaaS provider is better too because if you have to host/operate the software that you write, you will be more concerned with quality. Also, you will have motivation to deliver small amounts of value frequently so that you can continuously and smoothly improve cash flow.
This is contrasted against writing software for software product companies which deliver on death-march deadlines and then fire redundant developers after the software is released.
Google’s offering is interesting because it is really inexpensive (at the high end) or free (at the low end).