10 SaaS Startups Every Enterprise Should Know
Often thought of as a small-business tool, Software-as-a-Service offers plenty of potential for large enterprise customers, as evidenced by the 10 startups we're exploring here. Our list includes SaaS applications for big organizational challenges, such as supply-chain, payroll, sales, recruiting, and company-wide collaboration.
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When it comes to cloud computing options, enterprise IT departments often focus on Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) or Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS). That's because, in my experience, IT professionals at large organizations think of Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) as something primarily catering to small- and medium-size organizations.
But SaaS indeed can, and does, offer plenty of potential for enterprise customers, as evidenced by the 10 startups we're exploring here. Our list includes SaaS applications for traditional organizational challenges, such as supply-chain, payroll, sales, recruiting, and company-wide collaboration.
If your company develops software or sells products or services online, you, too, will find SaaS startups to help you offload many IT tasks, including creating development platforms and running payment fraud protection. In addition, several startups on our list take on the latest and most complex IT services, such as the Internet of Things (IoT), big data analytics, and monitoring inter-cloud networks and applications.
[What's next for Platform-as-a-Service? Read 7 PaaS Startups to Watch .]
The biggest obstacle facing SaaS in the enterprise is the notion that applications and data residing in the cloud would not be managed directly by in-house staff. It made SaaS a tough sell early on, because data was difficult, if not impossible, to manage, track, and extract. SaaS also held the stigma of vendor lock-in. CIOs are wary of using proprietary software in the cloud, owned and operated by a single vendor.
SaaS providers are working overtime to assuage these concerns. Meanwhile, IT leaders are learning to embrace the cloud for a variety of functions and applications. The development opens the door for more SaaS options in the enterprise.
Data is becoming more easily accessible and portable -- as is the ability to move from one SaaS product to another through the use of a robust set of cross-platform APIs, which many SaaS providers are introducing. Due diligence should still be performed to make sure the SaaS product you're choosing is the right long-term solution for your organization moving forward. Still, you'll find most of your concerns about vendor lock-in are largely resolved.
Once you've reviewed our list of 10 SaaS startups fit for the enterprise, tell us what you think. Are you considering any of the SaaS products listed here for your organization? What is your overall opinion regarding SaaS in the enterprise? Tell us all about it in the comments section below.
Businesses are attempting to tap into big data collection -- and decision making based on analytics of data -- in order to gain a competitive advantage. The care and protection of data falls to the IT organization. The problem is, data analytics is far easier said than done, and some enterprises are willing to consider outsourcing analytics to service providers. Segment is one option. It has built a SaaS platform to take in data, analyze it, and output it to any number of applications the customer chooses.
If your organization requires any type of e-commerce payment solutions, Forter is one SaaS startup worth investigating. Forter has a unique service that helps to eliminate fraud and provide instantaneous approval or denial. It also shifts liability away from the customer and onto the provider. Many retailers would likely find that new state of affairs highly appealing.
Enterprises faced with managing an aging and complex global supply chain may want to give Paradata a look. Paradata provides end-to-end supply chain intelligence to monitor and track key metrics which can be used to make real-time decisions. It does so without the enormous up-front investment required by in-house solutions.
If your organization is focused on sales and marketing strategies to generate added revenue this year, Showpad might be the right SaaS provider to partner with. The Showpad platform provides a modern and refreshing spin on dispensing product materials to your sales force. Once you've done so, the platform tracks all the necessary metrics to ensure your reps have the most up-to-date and important information available and accessible via PCs and mobile devices.
Collecting data for complicated analysis often involves the challenging and time-consuming process of cleaning and organizing the data before uploading to an analytics engine. Data cleaning is the part of the big data process that many fail at, which has given big data a bit of a black eye in recent years. Tamr is designed to clean and categorize your bits and bytes for you, so you don't have to deal with the headaches.
Software companies -- even the big ones -- can struggle to release software in a timely manner, because bug and vulnerability testing takes such a long time to complete. Many software companies are looking to the public to help test code by offering bug bounties. HackerOne Managed is designed to help software companies connect with qualified hackers looking to cash in on bug bounty payments.
If your enterprise is heavily cloud-based -- or if you partner with a number of different cloud providers -- you know how challenging it can be to grapple with monitoring data and applications across multiple cloud environments. Datadog offers a unified cloud monitoring solution which integrates with many of the most popular cloud providers. The monitoring solution is designed to alleviate the pain of losing end-to-end visibility across multiple cloud deployments.
Confluent offers a service for real-time streaming data needs. Its product is based on Apache Kafka -- an open-source data messaging platform. Confluent takes much of the heavy lifting away from IT, offering customers a scalable and easy-to-implement messaging platform. It can be used for a wide range of enterprise applications, including the Internet of Things (IoT).
The trick to using SaaS successfully in the enterprise is to find and outsource business processes and duties that don't vary widely from one part of the company to the next. A perfect example of this might be your human resources department. Namely is an HR and payroll cloud-based software platform designed to offload your in-house HR applications onto a fully managed SaaS. Your HR staff would get an all-in-one system for payroll, benefits, and recruiting, while employees get to work with a highly intuitive interface.
When you get right down to it, some IoT projects might be a bit too big for in-house IT shops to handle on their own. If you're dealing with hundreds or thousands of IoT devices, you may find the project is best managed by a service provider that already has all the necessary tools under one roof. Samsara provides a one-stop shop for a multitude of IoT zero-config sensors to monitor factors such as power, temperature, humidity, and location. Sensors can also tie into legacy SCADA systems for additional data collection and IoT management possibilities.
As you can gather from our list of enterprise-capable SaaS options, completely ignoring SaaS is no longer a valid strategy for big businesses. As you weigh the pros and cons of various cloud options, SaaS needs to be looked at closely, right alongside IaaS and PaaS. You might find engaging a SaaS product opens up a whole new world of cloud potential for your business.
As you can gather from our list of enterprise-capable SaaS options, completely ignoring SaaS is no longer a valid strategy for big businesses. As you weigh the pros and cons of various cloud options, SaaS needs to be looked at closely, right alongside IaaS and PaaS. You might find engaging a SaaS product opens up a whole new world of cloud potential for your business.
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