November 26, 2007

SaaS delivery model takes new turn

19Marketplace opens a retail SaaS store offering such apps as WebEx's WebOffice, Microsoft's Hosted Exchange, and Blackberry Mobile E-mail

With the announcement tomorrow by 19Marketplace of Workplace2go, SaaS will add yet another unique facet to its business model.

Unlike CRM services from Salesforce.com, RightNow, or Microsoft Dynamics, 19Marketplace offers none of its own products. Rather in its initial launch, it will offer to host a growing menu of well-known applications from other companies.

Workplace2go applications include WebEx WebOffice, WebEx Web Conferencing, Microsoft Hosted Exchange E-mail, Blackberry Mobile E-mail, Good Technology Mobile E-mail, Arsenal Digital Remote Data Backup, LivePrism Spam Protection, and McAfee TOPS for desktop security.

John Kryzkowski, general manager at 19Marketplace, likens his company to a retailer that takes on product lines from different manufacturers and becomes a specialist in sales, marketing, distribution, and merchandizing.

"The key is the right merchandise and services for our customers," said Kryzkowski.

Although to some extent what 19Marketplace is doing is like the traditional ASP (Application Service Provider) model, this is different in that the services 19Marketplace offers are architected around a multi-tenant infrastructure rather than a dedicated environment for each customer.

What makes 19Marketplace even more unique is that it the company does not host its own services; rather it resells popular applications, which are hosted at SaaS infrastructure provider Jamcracker.

The current list of applications is targeted at small businesses, and pricing appears to reflect the needs of that audience.

The service fee for Live Prism, an anti-spam package, is $1.99 per user per month. The fee for Microsoft Exchange E-Mail server with each user given 2GB of storage is $13.95 per user, per month.

Most of the current SaaS providers host applications in their own data center, making their time to market as much as nine months until they can deliver a new application, according to Kryzkowski.

On the other hand, 19Marketplace provides a link to services that are already up and running.

"We plug into them for provisioning and single sign on, and they have access to all of their services," said Kryzkowski.

Applications listed above are available immediately.

Ephraim Schwartz is an editor at large at InfoWorld. He also writes the Reality Check blog.
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