Tenzing Managed IT Services (Tenzing), a leading provider of hosting solutions for Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) providers and Ecommerce systems integrators; and Apprenda, the leading .NET cloud middleware company, today announced a strategic partnership that will help new and existing ISV (independent software vendor) customers accelerate their migration to a software-as-a-service (SaaS) business model and speed application development.

Clients have found that moving to a SaaS model by using a foundational technology like Apprenda's SaaSGrid cloud middleware can speed time to market by 40 to 60 per cent and lower overall development costs substantially⁽¹⁾. Through this partnership, Tenzing and Apprenda provide a true end-to-end SaaS delivery platform that enables ISVs to bring their SaaS offerings to market faster with the lowest ongoing cost of service delivery⁽²⁾. Together, Tenzing's EVEREST platform, a mission-critical infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) offering, and Apprenda's SaaSGrid enable ISVs to migrate and transform traditional on-premise software to a SaaS model, while reducing capital requirements and minimizing the need for ongoing R&D budgets for SaaS-specific architecture maintenance.

 I recently came across this article 'CRM Paradigm Shift'  by Harish Kotadia of Focus.com

 -this excerpt illuminates predictive analytics in SaaS based CRM and the low-risk benefits for SMBs

“Managing” customer relationships till now involved recording “transactions” between company and the customer over phone, email and web-site besides “snail” mail and face-to-face exchanges and using the “historical” or “past” information to better serve the customers. Company was in total control of this conversation with customer at every stage. Information was recorded using pre-determined fields in the database, by company employees (or by contractors trained by the company) using script in CRM application controlled by the company. Thanks to the convergence of cloud computing, social media, predictive analytics and smart phones, this comfortable existence of marketers (and CIOs, CTOs as well) is about to come to an end.

Australian software-as-a-service provider, Sqware Peg, has partnered with Informatica to bring its cloud to the local market.

The partnership will enable Sqware Peg to resell Informatica’s cloud services solutions in Australia, New Zealand, Hong Kong and Singapore.

Managing director, Shawn Stilwell, claimed the new partnership was primarily a mid-market to enterprise play, and had already seen traction in verticals including automotive, telecommunications, business services and education.