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Company: OpenAir, a NetSuite Company
Started: 1999
Located: Boston, Massachusetts
Geography: Global
Market: Cloud Computing PSA Solutions
Products: OpenAir Business Development, Resource Management, Project Management,
Knowledge Management and Project Accounting
Key Customers: American Federation of Teachers, Clickability, MetricStream, Model N,
PreVisor, Selectica, State of Oregon, and SupportSoft
Website: OpenAir
Twitter: @OpenAir
Recent News:
OpenAir CEO Joins SIIA Panel to Discuss Growting a SaaS Business Internationally
OpenAir Launches OpenAir Connect for SAP, Oracle and Salesforce.com
I asked Morris Panner, OpenAir’s CEO a few questions about his business and his view of the SaaS market as we move into 2010.
Did you start out as a Software-as-a-Service company?
We started the company in 1999 and were one of the original Software-as-a-Service pioneers like Salesforce.com according to Phil Wainewright who was at ASP News at the time.
Professional Services Automation or PSA started out because the world economy was moving to more of a Human Capital intensive market. Companies where beginning to leverage talent wherever they could get it through outsourcing, consulting and all types of value added professional services. Product companies were also evolving into services companies that were trying to solve all types of complicated business challenges. Companies like PRTM, a global strategy firm, Lafarge Cement, Siemens, AstraZeneca, Software AG, Progress Software and BMC were all evolving into product and services companies.
All the OpenAir founders came out of a variety of professional services organizations and we realized at that time, there were no good ways to manage complex, global services projects, especially using spreadsheets and email. Then the Internet came along and OpenAir saw this market need, where existing companies were struggling, then we refined our strategy and began developing products to meet this opportunity. There were other PSA firms at the time, including Niku, who moved into IT management, but the overall PSA market space was and continues to consolidate around fewer, larger players.
About 18 months ago, Zach Nelson, the CEO at NetSuite approached me and we agreed that the market was moving towards not just SaaS-based Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) market but to a Service Resource Planning market. At that point we agreed to merge the companies and since then we also acquired QuickArrow and now the OpenAir PSA segment of NetSuite comprises more than 1,000 customers and 85,000 users globally.
Why do your customers buy from OpenAir?
We think our customers are looking for a knowledgeable, long-term PSA partner. This type of partnership is very different than an infrastructure or transaction-type of software relationship, because professional services is it is really complex business process software. Our customers expect us to bring them our specific professional services domain expertise to help to make their businesses operate more efficiently.
For example, when we launched in Europe, we did a presentation to Siemens in Barcelona. They had SAP but didn’t like using their platform for managing complex services. Siemens wanted to select a services- oriented software platform that was referenceable with large enterprises like theirs. OpenAir’s difference wasn’t just the platform; it was our deployment approach for enterprise customers as well as our people.
Being a SaaS player is also an advantage because you don’t have to install anything, which saves our customers time and cost. This especially important for large global companies, because the types of services problems they face are distributed and complex, so SaaS just makes a lot of sense for them. Typically our customers are probably using Oracle, SAP platforms or even email and spreadsheets, to manage their services projects, but they aren’t easy-to-use or efficient solutions.
Our partnership with NetSuite has definitely helped us step on the gas with regard to new customer acquisition. Zach really understands markets and how they evolve, which is why he choose to work with OpenAir. Services and consulting executives are at the center of this market shift to a Service-based economy and OpenAir is helping them improve their businesses.
What do you see as the key trend emerging in the SaaS industry?
We see the major drivers as Cloud Computing and the shift from a manufacturing-based economy to a people and services-baed economy. OpenAir’s Cloud-based solutions are going to do for the service economy, what is what SAP did for the manufacturing economy.
NetSuite is making a big bet on Professional Services Automation and now have put the resources behind our Service Resources Planning approach to the market.
What is your outlook for 2010?
Even though last year was difficult for most software companies, 2009 was a great year for OpenAir.
As we look to 2010, growing our talent is the key to the success of our company and we will continue to build out our capabilities in Boston, Austin, London and the Philippines. We doubled our headcount in 2009 and we building a great team.
We’re very thankful for our good results in 2009 and 2010 looks to be on track for us.
Given we are starting a new decade and many could argue that SaaS started in during the last ten years, I thought it would be appropriate to recognize leaders of the SaaS movement. Here are the winners of the Montclair Advisors 2010 SaaS Hall of Fame:
Most Influential SaaS Company: Salesforce.com
Salesforce has have been the most vocal proponents of the SaaS business model for the last 10 years. They are also the largest SaaS Company based on revenues ($990M) and market value ($8.5B).
Most Influential SaaS Individual: Marc Benioff
As the CEO of Salesforce, Marc has been the major evangelist for the past ten years. His recent book Behind the Cloud is a great primer for entrepreneurs who are considering starting their own SaaS Company.
Best Transition to SaaS: Concur (Steve Singh)
Concur was the most visible company to move their business model to Software-as-a-Service from a traditional on-premise model. He moved his company from a low of .90 a share to creating a company with revenues of $250M and a market cap of over $2B.
Biggest SaaS Acquisition: Omniture (Josh James)
Adobe purchased Omniture firm for $1.8B in October 2009.
Largest SaaS IPO: NetSuite (Zach Nelson)
The largest SaaS IPO so far is Netsuite’s public offering in December 2007 for $185M. This event made Larry Ellison quite happy since he owned more than half of the company.
Largest SaaS Deployment: SuccessFactors (Siemens)
In 2009 SuccessFactors announced the largest SaaS applications deployment to date with Siemens where they will deploy their performance management software for more than 400,000 managers and employees.
Biggest SaaS Comeback: Dave Duffield (Workday)
After his company PeopleSoft was acquired by Oracle, Dave Duffield formed one of the most successful pure SaaS companies, Workday, designed to create the next generation of ERP solutions.
Most SaaS Customers: Salesforce.com
Since they are one of the original SaaS companies it is not hard to believe they would have the largest customer base but they are clearly much larger than any other SaaS company with more than 65,000 customers.
Most Influential SaaS Analyst: Bill McNee (Saugatuck Technologies)
Bill, a Gartner Group alumni, has built his firm, Saugatuck Technologies to be exclusively focused on Software-as-a-Service and Cloud Computing for the past ten years.
Most Influential SaaS Journalist: Phil Wainewright
Phil has been a blogger and journalist with many different publications including ZDNet doing a comprehensive job of covering SaaS industry events, companies and trends.
Most Influential SaaS Pundit: Jeff Kaplan (THINKstrategies)
Jeff has been a very visible figure at industry events, associations, publications where he has promoted and commented on SaaS trends and players for the past ten years.
Most Influential Investment Firm: Bessemer Venture Partners
Byron Deeter and his colleague Philippe Botteri published a very popular Top 10 Laws for Being ‘SaaS-y’ as well as having invested in many leading SaaS companies.
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