by Jeff Yoshimura, VP of Marketing
The software industry has come a long way. When Salesforce.com launched more than a decade ago, most thought it was for small businesses and that the SaaS model could only be delivered by startups. But today SaaS applications have proliferated across the enterprise and every major software company has a SaaS initiative.
I joined Salesforce.com in 2003, and during my 5-year tenure, I had the opportunity to work the front lines of this shift in software deploying some of Salesforce’s first enterprise accounts at ADP, Dupont, and Merrill Lynch to being a part of the team that launched AppExchange, where I worked with some of Salesforce’s early ISVs to build applications on the Force.com platform.
Today, I am particularly excited to share how one of my first partners, Informatica, has successfully built an on-demand practice, and for three years running, they’ve become the most popular data integration application on the AppExchange. What I remember most from working with Informatica is that from early they had a clear vision to build a SaaS line of products to compliment their industry leading on-premise products, something hard to do for many enterprise software vendors. And once they had this vision, they built a complete team (product managers, engineers, sales and business development) to execute, and perhaps most importantly, Informatica continues to innovate constantly to stay ahead of the competition and to align with their customer’s needs.
A great example of this is how Informatica is revolutionizing the data integration space with its Cloud Express product by becoming the first data integration vendor to offer customers pay-as-you-go pricing without term commitments and providing its customers a self-service experience to sign-up online with credit cards, view their plan, invoices and usage statistics online, and upgrade and change their plan online.
Congratulations Informatica on all your success with your SaaS business! The team at Zuora can’t wait to see what you’ll do next!