With companies of all sizes realizing that buying software on-demand provides greater cost control, boosts response times to changing market conditions, and aids liquidity through reducing the amount of funds required for capital expenditure, the market for Software as a Service (SaaS) has experienced tremendous growth over the last 12 months.
As the rise of SaaS has opened up new opportunities for end-customers, it has correspondingly created new pressures for ISVs, such as the need for an online shop-front for the sale of its services. Fujitsu is addressing exactly this challenge with its ISV Cloud program, offering pre-configured cloud business services for easy-to-administer online service sales running on Fujitsu's complete Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) platform.
One early example of an ISV partner that has been able to leverage the massive scalability and reach of Fujitsu's IaaS is the founder-run Austrian ERP software house Verpura GmbH, which has been able to rapidly scale address a far wider international customer base without the need for huge upfront investment in infrastructure to support its electronic shop-fronts.
Verpura has signed-up for Fujitsu's innovative approach to 'share risk, share revenue' billing. Having evaluated Verpura's business plan, Fujitsu financed the pre-investment including infrastructure and cloud services, and started to receive revenue as soon as Verpura started generating cash-flow - enabling Verpura to benefit from a zero-investment business expansion opportunity.
According to analyst David Bradshaw, Research Manager Applications and Solutions EMEA at the market intelligence firm IDC, this model breaks the mold: "The billing part alone addresses a major issue for Cloud ISVs," he comments."But providing a full package of infrastructure and back-end support, without charge until the partner is able to generate revenues, is a new approach that will gain momentum in the market very rapidly as ISVs realize the opportunities that it unlocks."
Today, Verpura is already collecting revenue, shared with Fujitsu, for sales of its Enterprise Resource Planning software. Income started flowing just a few weeks after set-up - compared with the cycle of up to 12 months for a traditional start-up. Florian Gumpinger, CEO at Verpura says: "With the Fujitsu ISV Cloud Program we gathered speed in delivering our software online. We get all components needed for our online business and only focus on the business service - our value add to our customers. It is the business service we are charging for - not the Cloud enablement technology. That is merely a commodity. Within the next two years we aim to generate 4.2 Million revenue with the online business"
Andre Kiehne, Vice President Cloud Business at Fujitsu Technology Solutions comments: "The software market is at a pivotal moment of change. Fujitsu has moved quickly into a leadership position in enabling innovative, market-disrupting ISVs such as Verpura to address new markets and to access a much larger customer base. This underlines that ISVs of all sizes can rely on Fujitsu to build their businesses in the cloud - in just a few days after they developed their online business model - without any pre-investment."
ISV partners can test Fujitsu's ISV Cloud Program for three months, free of charge and make use of any necessary implementation support. This is a complete ecosystem for ISVs comprised of Fujitsu's Infrastructure as a Service, Platform as a Service and soon-to-launch ISV Marketplace. In German speaking countries there are already more than 30 ISVs evaluating Fujitsu's offering.
More information is available on Fujitsu's ISV Cloud Program Website under
http://ts.fujitsu.com/... .
For further information about Verpura, please see: http://www.verpura.eu (English and German)
For further information, please see:
http://blog.ts.fujitsu.com/
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About Fujitsu
Fujitsu is a leading provider of ICT-based business solutions for the global marketplace. With approximately 170,000 employees supporting customers in 70 countries, Fujitsu combines a worldwide corps of systems and services experts with highly reliable computing and communications products and advanced microelectronics to deliver added value to customers. Headquartered in Tokyo, Fujitsu Limited (TSE:6702) reported consolidated revenues of 4.5 trillion yen (US$55 billion) for the fiscal year ended March 31, 2011. For more information, please see: www.fujitsu.com and http://ch.fujitsu.com/.