Via Internet News: Ray Ozzie made his first major appearance in the role of Chief Software Architect of Microsoft before the company's annual financial analyst meeting.

His speech centered around software as a service, but perhaps more notable was who wasn't at the day-long meeting: the man he replaced, Bill Gates.

CEO Steve Ballmer said Gates was "someplace in Africa at this stage enjoying his vacation."

That alone is newsworthy, as Gates set the bar for workaholic endurance few could match. But Ozzie handled the duties well, continuing Microsoft's mantra of software as a service and almost sounding like Salesforce.com's Marc Benioff at times when discussing how to help users get a job done.

"Since our historical success has been PC-centric, it's only natural to think that we might have taken a PC-centric view of how to fulfill these experiences," he said.

"Even in cases where the experience is best delivered by writing applications for the PC, when considering the overall user experience that we're trying to achieve, we now start with a service-centric perspective."

Since his arrival at Microsoft last year via the acquisition of his company, Groove Networks, Ray Ozzie has been very good about getting Microsoft into the online services field.

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Via TheWHIR News: One of the nice things about the technology business is that the emerging markets tend to make themselves pretty obvious, as in the case of the booming business of on-demand software delivery, or software as a service. Technology research company IDC projects the market for software as a service to grow 26 percent annually, from $2.1 billion in 2002 to $8.1 billion in 2008, while Gartner chose SaaS as one of the Top five technology trends for 2005. In the past, however, software developers and service providers have faced a variety of barriers in the on-demand delivery of services, particularly technological obstacles. For service providers, integrating the solutions into their offerings has often been a complex task, and finding the services to support their delivery has been a stumbling block for ISVs. Santa Clara, California based Jamcracker (jamcracker.com) is working to address the complexity in SaaS delivery, helping solution providers to lower those barriers to entry through its service delivery network. The former application service provider recently launched Jamcracker Service Delivery Network 2.0, making it possible for solution providers at any stage of the on demand delivery supply chain to tap into functions that can help them increase revenue. And Jamcracker believes that Web hosting companies have the right resources and customers to capitalize on the booming SaaS business. "[Web hosting companies] are constantly offering new offers and bundles of services, but there's no reason why all or a good percentage of hosting companies should also be able to add more than just the basic ping power pipe to their offerings," says Brent Arslaner, VP of marketing and business development for Jamcracker. aThe JDSN service is an easy way hosting companies can get into the business of offering value added services, be it if they're IT centric or potentially more business centric services."

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Via ZDNET Dana GardnerA I recently took an analyst briefing from Agile development and developer management vendor Rally Software, and while I'm very impressed with their new offerings and core value around bringing scale, feedback, and coordination to Agile development practices, I was really jazzed by the innovation they have brought to creating a hybrid, sort of sliding-scale approach with Rally Enterprise between on-premises software deployments and SaaS, or on-demand, delivery models.

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Today Genius.com announced news we hoped you would be interested in a we announced the integration of MicrosoftA(R) OutlookA(R) with the SalesGeniusac on-demand application, along with the addition of several new SalesGenius features that increase functionality and ease of use. The integration of SalesGenius and Outlook means that the roughly 400 million Outlook users worldwide can now easily send aGeniusa-enabled e-mails and get all the benefits of SalesGenius tracking capabilities, directly from Outlook. A simple wizard-based process installs a aSend with SalesGeniusa menu option in Outlook. Users simply compose an e-mail in Outlook, include one or more links to their web sites, and click to send fully trackable Genius e-mails. The Genius Trackerac instantly shows e-mail opens and web site visits for all recipients.
A free download of the Genius Plug-in for Outlook is available at: www.genius.com/outlook
A 15-day free trial of SalesGenius is available at: www.genius.com/trial.html.

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Clicktools is a UK-based application service provider (ASP)/Software as a Service(Saas) Provider , the first vendor to develop and deliver enterprise-strength On Demand Feedback Management Services. Clicktools has a sophisticated web-based survey and analysis tools, organizations can capture feedback from customers and instantly turn it into useful knowledge that improves the customer experience, customer satisfaction and profitability.

More about Clicktools.

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Via TopHosts: Today at HostingCon 2006, Microsoft Corp. reported that changes in software delivery to businesses and consumers are driving strong demand for Microsoft hosting solutions.

Microsoft says the dramatic increase in the popularity of its Web server industry solutions is due to new customer deployments such as, hosting providers Intergenia AG in Germany and Portal Tone in South Korea.

In addition, Microsoft also announced that it has focused on enhancing its partner ecosystem with service providers such as, NaviSite Inc. and OpSource Inc., which have launched incubation centers to help independent software vendors in creating software as a service-enabled application. Also, software companies SWsoft Inc., SMBLive Corp. and WebHost Automation Ltd. have produced new hosting applications for the Windows platform, allowing service providers to provide more alternatives to their customers.

Microsoft says software as a service (SaaS) has now become a reality thanks to elements such as, ever-present broadband penetration rates, lower hardware costs and high availability of service. As a result, Web hosts, forgotten after the application service provider model failed to reach fruition, are now able to work as a primary software delivery channel for everyone from consumers to large businesses.

Microsoft reports that it has aligned its Web hosting to allow service providers to take advantage of the changing market dynamics sparked by the SaaS model.

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WebCentral upped its services offering with the public launch of a new online Software as a Service (SaaS) sales hub.

WebCentral Application Marketplace offers SMEs a range of on demand business applications such as CRM, accounting and tax, business processing and website management.

The site competes against Salesforce.com and Microsoftas growing suite of on demand business applications.

WebCentral CEO Andrew Spicer said the company had opted for a soft launch of the sales hub to customers and partners in April in an effort to aprove the modela before promoting it to the wider market.

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Microsoft Corp. said on Tuesday it plans to introduce a Web-based version of its sales and marketing software in 2007 as it targets rivals like Salesforce.com , Oracle Corp. , and SAP AGA in a fast-growing market.

Microsoft said the service initially would target small businesses. Analysts said it showed that the world's biggest software maker is serious about meeting growing demand for applications delivered over the Internet.

Rob Bois, an analyst at AMR Research, said the upcoming service would give Microsoft a foothold in a burgeoning part of the estimated $11 billion market for so-called customer relationship management, or CRM, software that helps companies manage sales forces and track sales leads.

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Vecta, provider of sales intelligence solutions has announced the launch of aVecta OnDemanda, an industry-first solution that promises to put aoperationala business intelligence at the fingertips of the sales force without the need for additional IT infrastructure or resources. To date, the aon demanda model has largely been associated with CRM, but Vecta OnDemand is breaking new ground by introducing truly operational BI Software as a Service (SaaS). In practice this means that key information based on customer buying patterns, for example new sales opportunities or warnings of decreased spend, can now be delivered to the sales and marketing teams via timely alerts using a hosted web-based application. There are three components to the new service; subscription licensing, hosted delivery and managed services, all of which allow customers to focus on the benefits of the software, not on managing it. Vecta OnDemand delivers true SaaS by incorporating managed services that ensure raw data is translated into timely and relevant sales information that directs salespeople to the most profitable sales opportunities.

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While the technology market is maturing, there are still major developments to tackle. One of the most significant developments in the past few years has been the increasing importance of open-source software.

Open-source companies are unusual in that they freely distribute the code behind their software, allowing others to tweak and rewrite it. The theory is that any rewrites are then also shared. But it is not only amateurs working from their garage who are involved in this process. IBM, for example, has devoted significant resources to it.

The open-source companies then make their money by charging to package open-source products and provide support.

While Oracle is not developing open-source it has been including an open-source web server, Apache, in its products for years and recently bought Berkeley DB an open-source database company.

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