Making The SaaS And Collaboration Marriage Work

Finding collaboration and Web 2.0 technologies to facilitate collaboration between employees and partners is a top business priority. How technology enters businesses is changing as business leaders and individual workers are demanding more say in choosing the tools of their trade. With software-as-a-service (SaaS), a myriad of vendors can now provide both business and IT buyers with easily purchased and provisioned collaboration technologies. But how should a vendor reach these constiuencies in a very crowded market? To date, vendors have tried a hodgepodge of direct sales and channel strategies. Maximizing the partner channel is critical to be successful with collaboration and Web 2.0 SaaS. Vendors must evaluate partner opportunities based on the following: 1) the maturity of the market that the vendor operates in; 2) the maturity of the vendor's SaaS offering; and 3) the strength of the vendor's brand.