Software as a Service (SaaS) is growing 50 percent annually. In the next five years, SaaS will represent 25 percent of all software sales. And, in 2017, total SaaS sales are predicted to be $100 billion. That’s a big change from where we are today.
At his World Hosting Days keynote, Open-Xchange CEO, Rafael Laguna, talked about these changes and the opportunity that brings for service providers to increase revenues.
Rafael made the point that people spend 40 percent of their time processing email. Service providers have the opportunity to sell directly to those users – not just those administrators in charge of email – which means at least 10 times more prospects.
Upselling users from email to advanced features like shared documents and support for mobile devices means an additional $50-$100 per user per year. Rafael said that Open-Xchange sees an average 3 percent of users converting to paid services. For a service provider with 50,000 users that represents an additional $100,000 in annual revenues.
Make sure you’re along for the ride in our changing software industry and positioned to serve the needs of users while deriving additional compensation for delivering those services. You can see more about how to “Ignite Your Market” here.