The business software market evolves quickly, so it is important to keep track of the latest software market trends so that your company can utilize technology as a strategic advantage. Functional and technological improvements in business software can have a big impact on how your company do business. In addition the business software marketplace is changing, as vendors and customers move toward a service-oriented model. The changes are impacting many of the fundamentals of doing business as a software provider: strategy, marketing, sales and distribution.

The purpose of Software Business Consultant is to provide timely actions, information and guide to software and software services vendors about doing business in a services oriented world.

SW Trends

Not only IT, but other industry sectors are moving towards a service-oriented model, some faster – some slower. This change is evident in a number of current trends in the IT and other marketplaces can be seen e.g. Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA), Software as a Service (SaaS), and the move toward IT as a service business.

Enterprises and software vendors are adopting SOA approach. SOA allows business needs to drive architecture through the integration of repeatable services to support business processes rapidly and flexibly, with the potential for substantial Return-On-Investment (ROI) to justify software purchases.

The number of SOA deployments have already started to adopt open source, such as messaging and service enablement SOA products. It also seems likely that SOA deployments will start to adopt some of the newer techniques to increase performance, scalability and reliability.

Over the past few years, the Software as a Service (SaaS) model has been gaining market acceptance. Software as a Service means that a software vendor hosts a software application where customers access the software system and data via the internet. The SaaS model can be particularly appealing for smaller companies that have limited technology personnel.

This ongoing direction to services has critical implications on the architecture of software products, and even on the business models that every company need to consider, as global trend is to continue move towards a services oriented models.

The move towards services oriented approach is inevitable, as the global market place drives businesses to be more flexible and agile in order to stay competitive.

The latest trend is to move to a services modeling, which directs to the questions when reviewing next time your company strategy: