Recently we were fortunate enough to speak with Jerry Huskins, Managing Director of Astadia Consulting LLC for EMEA.For those of you not familiar with this part of the game Astadia have been way ahead of the curve in terms of SaaS consultancy services. Today they are the biggest VAR of Salesforce.com, one of the early and the largest partner of Workday, and are rarely out of the news headlines.
They are also the top implementation partner and service provider for other industry leading software as a service (SaaS) companies including Eloqua, Xactly, CastIron and others.
Formed in 2006 with the merger of GrowthCycle and MW Advisers in October of 2006, Astadia has not taken long to establish itself as a force to be reckoned with in the field of SaaS consulting.
In August of 2007 they hit number 83 on the 2007 Inc. 500 list; one of only 20 companies in Business Services that made the list.
They have published many programs on the Force.com platform, in November 2007 they announced a partnership with Barry Rhein & Associates', and in January they announced a funding deal with Kodiak Partners for an undisclosed amount which they say is to be used for domestic and international expansion as well as potential acquisitions.
Q1. What spurred on the early interest in on demand technologies that led to Astadia being where it is today?
We were delivering sales consulting and training and we saw that our clients needed to pass leads out to their feild operatives, and to manage them through leads databases. When we saw Salesforce.com it seemed a natural evolution for us in 2001.
Today we have a platform seat, specific in a number of market verticals. We provide Sales and Marketing support on demand, ERP, Financial areas and so on; we are now also one of the first Workday partners
Demenad is going very well, we have a surprisingly large number of early consultants lots trained.
Q2 How do you see the market for SaaS over the next, say, 18 months in terms of additional sectors? Are we still a long way from Gartner's now famous "70%" of business applications?
Even with a recession in the US and Europe we are seeing healthy growth due to the productivity and cost advantages offered by SaaS.
I think that over the next 18 months we will see a lot of smaller locally or regionally based, next generation internet consulting businesses, and a maturing of the partner models.
Today Salesforce.com has 100 partners worldwide, they are not well organized or funded, the next 18 months will see an increase in well funded partners looking to create global businesses using these platforms.
Today many SaaS VAR's or partners are small companies. But consulting is being done differently when dealing with SaaS, Companies that take advantage of that advantage of that will continue to grow and be more global.
As a part of this I think we will also see a lot of consolidation in the SaaS consulting area as larger firms establish themselves further.
Q3. Commentators in the IT and Business Process outsourcing sectors have told us that SaaS is creating opportunities for On-Demand vendors and service providers.
Does this ring true given what you are seeing on your side of the market?
We are certainly seeing an appetite from companies to engage SaaS partners and VAR's in outsourcing. Many IT managers are weighing the options between the on shore, near shore and off shore outsourcing models using SaaS as the platform.
Q4. Is SaaS still being purchased mainly at the departmental level?
Its a bit of a mixed bag right now. Some clients are larger purchases, while we still see a lot of activity by department heads. Some of our clients are also using us to train them how to build their own in-house SaaS programs.
Q5. What would be your advice to IT leaders around the world?
The smart ones are saying "We huge made investments in mainframe client server technology, SaaS may have a place, how do we combine what we have with SaaS to get productivity gains."
The goal now for them is to think through how does it work together and what kind of road map should I be making to capture the benefits that SaaS promises.
We appreciate Jerry taking the time to speak with us from his offices in the UK.
Astadia have had an enormous amount of success and are a template for others wishing to try to leverage other emerging technologies. Next generation consultancies would be wise to check out their history and approach.
Intensive partnering, proven software platforms wrapped in value adding services, aggressive partnering strategies combined with the pursuit of growth through strategic funding. A fantastic story of an inspiring company - we wish them well!
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