ENTERPRISE TECHNOLOG
SAP.” Ambarish Gupta at Knowlarity,
continues: “Another big underlying
development alongside the SaaS world
is API-fying SaaS products. This is
referred to as unbundling of traditional
SaaS products. Most of the products
solve a specific problem or a specific
set of problems, and do a good job at it.
However, they also acknowledge there
is scope for improvement by integrating
with another tool or suite of tools.
As much as there is effort on making
things open for plug and play, it’s not in
their strategy to do solutioning.”
Dr Hichem Maya, Head of Industries, SAP MENA.
overseas. Local knowledge, network
and physical proximity will accelerate
growth and this is increasingly a trend
among B2B SaaS products.”
2. Take the software and customise
it: SaaS usually comes in a one-size-
fits-all solution, accommodating the
requirements of the average user,
which may be fine for some, but not
all organisations. VARs are again in
a great position to offer knowledge
and specialist technical skills to assist
in the customisation of a solution.
Vijay Jaswal at Software AG says:
“In terms of customisation, VARs
have the advantage of providing
industry specific knowledge on what
particular services an organisation
will require.” Dr Hichem Maya,
at SAP MENA, adds: “The biggest
channel revenue opportunity is in
customising SaaS applications to
meet business needs, especially for
third platform technologies such as
mobility, social media and Big Data.
Demonstrating the strong opportunities
for SaaS optimisation, only 12 per
cent of organisations using SaaS said
that current applications meet their
business needs, according to a recent
Forrester survey commissioned by
3. Help to migrate and integrate:
Interoperability may be an issue
between some SaaS solutions or existing
legacy applications and it may also prove
a challenge to migrate data easily or
successfully; excellent news for VARs,
which have a substantial opportunity
to step in and save the day by designing
and deploying solutions to meet client
requirements. Vijay Jaswal at Software
AG says: “Integration of applications in
SaaS also presents revenue sources for
VARs in terms of design methods on
Many service
providers and
vendors agree
that the channel
has a vital role to
play when it comes
to SaaS, especially
in the SMB
sphere, where
organisations
will still seek out
SaaS resellers for
implementation
and advice.
The biggest
channel revenue
opportunity is in
customising SaaS
applications to
meet business
needs, especially
for third platform
technologies
such as mobility,
social media and
Big Data.
Dr Hichem Maya, Head of
Industries, SAP MENA.
how to integrate or migrate from legacy
to SaaS applications.”
4. Offer to train: Implementation and
overcoming initial technical SaaS
solution snags will inevitably evolve
into developing working processes
and making them more efficient and
user friendly, which involves training
so that the application can be used
to its full potential. Step in the VARs,
which can assist with these crucial
tasks to monitor patterns of usage,
identify and obviate possible problems
and tweak the solutions for maximum
effectiveness. Vijay Jaswal at Software
AG says: “VARs can develop plans and
provide training for users, as well as
identify potential problems and fix the
solutions under the SaaS management
system.” Dr Hichem Maya, at SAP
MENA, concludes: “Middle East channel
partners should help their customers
by tying in SaaS deployments to a wider
digital transformation strategy, and
upskilling customers in how to best use
the business applications.”
19