On day two of the Hosting Summit, the IDC industry perspective, SaaS and CRM enablement was the focus of the day before the attendees were given their bag lunches and sent to the airport. Here are some thoughts and some summary notes on day 2.

Erin Tenwolde, Research Manager, IDC - "Software as a Service, Entering a new world of Partnering Opportunity"

SaaS ecosystem and delivery channel, SaaS generally falls into two categories such as: Hosted application management, such as organizations like AT&T and Corio would use a provider to deliver the traditional package software OR software on demand which is one solution for many such as a shared infrastructure.

Two types of classifications within SaaS and their providers of SaaS are Access (Microsoft, Cisco, Salesforce) and Availability (Google, Oracle, Amazon)

CRM is the most recognized and most popular on demand SaaS solution, 3.4B by 2011, wow! By the year 2011, it will be a14B dollar business software on demand, huge! What does the industry need to REALLY kick it up to compelling levels? Integration, better channel and core to businesses business! Does that make sense? J Erin stated that venture capitalist look very favorably to companies who have a SaaS or software on-demand delivery model, very encouraging for this market and new growth! 67% of those companies surveyed, deemed SaaS as VERY important, but the sample size of the data/feedback was smaller than what we would have liked.

IDC believes that strong partnerships and ecosystems are FAR more important to success than traditional software deliver. This is very encouraging. The relationship between nodes, links and hubs was helpful to illustrate this premise. Overall, it is still early in the market. Erin did show an excellent matrix on high configuration, low configuration, solving IT problems and business problems and what solutions are seen as resident in these areas. Today, CRM and ERP delivery seen as more direct channel sale, collaboration, communications and security more prevalent in an indirect channel/reseller. This presentation was more of a validation than a revelation regarding SaaS or software on demand, but still very useful and helpful from a established industry source.

John Rowell, CTO, OpSource - "Industry Perspective"

OpSource is a leader is SaaS delivery and has always been great Microsoft partner is founder in SaaS incubator program, with 40 ISV's! John felt like, we should know the fear and understand that this is the time of the "On-demand hosting commoditizers." OpSource and successful hosters need to sell the stack and services for ISV's, thus reinforcing what is already known. As John Zanni stated yesterday, ISV's should not try to host or run operations, look to a hosting provider and do what you do best, Dev and sell!

The SaaS channel needs to improve and on a techological level interoperate and integrate better as according to John, is the number one barrier to SaaS adoption. Web services can improve this. Create a better marketplace than just Appexchange to interchange sales channel data and publish robust business-class, new applications and get away from consumer-based “widget” apps.

Good and entertaining session John, thanks!

Mark Corley, Senior Director, CRM product team, Microsoft - "Hosting Microsoft Dynamics – CRM”.

In the SMB market, CRM is growing faster than any other segment at a rate of 18.3% through 2010. Today, the CRM team sees that CRM installs are becoming smaller for SMB's (departmental, group) and S+S is driving this activity.

I had a great time and really enjoyed meeting with partners, customers and hosting team members. We should do this every year from now on! Oh wait…

- Chris Samson, Senior Hosting Technology Specialist, Microsoft