Comments on: Why SaaS Operations Need Automation http://blog.noliosoft.com/2009/03/why-saas-operations-need-automation/ Discussing Application Automation and Data Center Automation Solutions Thu, 03 Jun 2010 14:35:27 -0400 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.8.4 hourly 1 By: Andrew Junkuhn http://blog.noliosoft.com/2009/03/why-saas-operations-need-automation/comment-page-1/#comment-387 Andrew Junkuhn Mon, 09 Nov 2009 08:55:25 +0000 http://www.noliosoft.com/blog/?p=26#comment-387 We spent 3 months building our SaaS offering front-end and another 6 on the provisioning, billing, retention policy, self-service, report generator, etc. It was very frustrating for the non-technical people in the business, as for the first 3 months they saw all sorts of lovely stuff popping up daily, then nothing. However now that we have all the automation done our app should run smoothly and with very little human involvement in the mundane tasks. It was a painful decision to approach it like this and cost us lots of money and time but Mr Shomron nails it on the head ! We spent 3 months building our SaaS offering front-end and another 6 on the provisioning, billing, retention policy, self-service, report generator, etc. It was very frustrating for the non-technical people in the business, as for the first 3 months they saw all sorts of lovely stuff popping up daily, then nothing. However now that we have all the automation done our app should run smoothly and with very little human involvement in the mundane tasks. It was a painful decision to approach it like this and cost us lots of money and time but Mr Shomron nails it on the head !

]]> By: Thomas Hood http://blog.noliosoft.com/2009/03/why-saas-operations-need-automation/comment-page-1/#comment-3 Thomas Hood Fri, 22 May 2009 14:33:45 +0000 http://www.noliosoft.com/blog/?p=26#comment-3 Very good article. Its very essential to understand the level of automation required when you build up your own SaaS company. Based on my own experience you should pay attention to your order & billing processes related automation too. Very good article. Its very essential to understand the level of automation required when you build up your own SaaS company. Based on my own experience you should pay attention to your order & billing processes related automation too.

]]> By: Scott Waldrum http://blog.noliosoft.com/2009/03/why-saas-operations-need-automation/comment-page-1/#comment-2 Scott Waldrum Thu, 14 May 2009 17:51:49 +0000 http://www.noliosoft.com/blog/?p=26#comment-2 Good article. Very few companies really think about this stuff early. I've been in engineering or product mgmt with 3 SaaS companies now. In fact, even as the VP of Product Development at the last company it was difficult to convince people that SaaS operations is important when you're trying to get your product out. (something about not having unlimited funds) I now work with a company that provides this type of infrastructure to other SaaS services. Interestingly enough, we're seeing more and more early stage companies speaking with us. Not long ago it was only larger SaaS services that had run head-on into the problem that were calling us. You break the operations pieces up into 2 parts. I completely agree that the 2nd part is tightly coupled with the application and likely needs to be done in house. The 1st part (provisioning, billing, retention policy, self-service, report generator) exists today in the form of SaaS offerings that manage subscribers/billing/payments. There are some great services that give you all of this right out of the box. <a href="http://www.ipapplications.com" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">IPA's platform</a> is just one of them. Good article. Very few companies really think about this stuff early. I’ve been in engineering or product mgmt with 3 SaaS companies now. In fact, even as the VP of Product Development at the last company it was difficult to convince people that SaaS operations is important when you’re trying to get your product out. (something about not having unlimited funds) I now work with a company that provides this type of infrastructure to other SaaS services. Interestingly enough, we’re seeing more and more early stage companies speaking with us. Not long ago it was only larger SaaS services that had run head-on into the problem that were calling us.

You break the operations pieces up into 2 parts. I completely agree that the 2nd part is tightly coupled with the application and likely needs to be done in house. The 1st part (provisioning, billing, retention policy, self-service, report generator) exists today in the form of SaaS offerings that manage subscribers/billing/payments. There are some great services that give you all of this right out of the box. IPA’s platform is just one of them.

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