1. SAAS PLATFORMS
EcosystEms EvolvE to mEEt thE
nEEds of EmErging saas vEndors
A TripleTree Industry Analysis
SPOTLIGHT REPORT
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2. TABLE OF CONTENTS
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY 2
DEFINING SAAS PLATFORMS 4
DIFFERENTIATING SAAS PLATFORMS 11
DECIDING TO ALIGN WITH A SAAS PLATFORM 12
CONCLUSIONS 14
THE TRIPLETREE TEAM 16
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3. EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
Trends in the software industry are pointing toward another eventful year in
the growth of Software as a Service (SaaS). Announcements from Salesforce.
com, Cisco (WebEx), NetSuite and many others have unveiled newly minted
approaches to strengthening their current partner ecosystems with a move toward
more robust platforms. SAP, Microsoft and Oracle have jumped into the fray too
as their ability to keep pace via legacy on-premise software delivery and pricing
has come into question and they woo best-in-class SaaS vendors to leverage their
growing suite of development, operating and marketing tools and processes.
The growth of SaaS between 2004 and 2006 brought many vendor
ecosystems to the forefront of discussions surrounding their potential to
reinvent many sectors with on-demand solutions. The aim of alliances like
Salesforce.com’s AppExchange was to create a network effect by aligning vendors
with complementary functionality to extend a broader solution rather than
forcing Salesforce.com to build a proprietary end-to-end suite.
While “SaaS” ecosystems have served some basic marketing needs by building
brand awareness and offering lead-sharing opportunities, most have failed to
flourish into mutually beneficial partnerships. As emerging vendors realize the
broader needs of their businesses, it is becoming apparent that to contain their
development and support costs and spur growth, a platform approach and related
partner program is needed.
A few forces supporting the need for SaaS Platforms as a natural evolution of
SaaS Ecosystems include:
• Executives are warming to the concept of renting rather than owning IT
assets.
• The demand for vertically focused and domain-centric solutions is strong and
best served by speciality vendors. SaaS vendors by definition are specialists,
while still seeking better ways to support and grow their businesses.
• Traditional software vendors with rich IP and global reach have struggled
to re-invent themselves in a SaaS world. However their financial strength,
channels and existing customer relationships will make them formidable
competitors down the road.
• IT departments are becoming willing allies as they partner with business
executives in assembling SaaS solutions rather than trying to “build and own
everything.”
• New design constructs which take advantage of open standards and SOA are
becoming core to the product suites of several global technology vendors.
This affords the emerging firm access to the same powerful process engines
and integration tools via SaaS Platforms.
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4. This TripleTree publication is our ninth on SaaS. At a high level, it identifies over
a dozen vendors who are positioning themselves as SaaS Platforms and highlights
four components TripleTree has identified as a basic framework for their success.
It concludes with a review of six differentiating functions for this framework and
offers some considerations for CEOs who are deciding how best to align with a
SaaS Platform. TripleTree’s perspective is based on hundreds of discussions with
SaaS business builders seeking M&A and growth capital alternatives, and scores
of strategic briefings with global technology and business services firms seeking
the next plateau of growth.
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5. DEFINING SAAS PLATFORMS
Emerging SaaS firms are faced with different market dynamics than those vendors
who were early to market. With SaaS now being more main stream in the minds
of CIOs, on-demand applications must come to market as “enterprise class
or better” and organically building this capability and quality is prohibitively
expensive and time consuming. SaaS Platforms provide an attractive and
economical alternative for SaaS vendors focused on improved service quality
and time to market.
TripleTree tracks over 1600 SaaS businesses in nearly every domain category and
industry vertical. As businesses become more complex, many best-in-class SaaS
solutions are stepping up to serve customer needs in an increasingly competitive,
dynamic and consolidating software industry.
In reaction to these complexities, nearly every IT vendor at one point or
another has considered their business as a “platform” (browser platform, content
management platform, development platform, hardware platform, knowledge
management platform, mobile platform, publishing platform, OS platform, social
computing platform, virtualization platform, etc). It begs the question: What is
a platform? As part of the answer, SaaS CEOs should consider a few realities:
• Alliances are needed at a level beyond marketing relationships: The
marketing-centric alliances and ecosystems prevalent among software firms over
the past several years were not designed to serve the needs of SaaS vendors.
• Applications are emerging that extend beyond CRM and accounting:
Salesforce.com, NetSuite and RightNow Technologies have long been
associated with pioneering the popularity and growth of SaaS. While their
role and early partner models were and still are significant, a new set of
attributes are now defining sustainable SaaS market leadership.
• How should Google, advertising and analytics be included in a strategy?
Advertising has profoundly impacted IT and most are in agreement that
advertising (for now) is a huge value driver for SaaS companies who don’t
have a traditional user-based or subscription pricing model. The power of
SaaS based analytical tools lies in their real-time ability to capture data
within product surveys, inbound customer inquiries, website statistics,
financial metrics and creating answers to some basic questions. Who is
looking at my ad? What is this information indicating that may take our
business in a new direction? Do I really need to partner with SAP, IBM or
Oracle to leverage powerful analytics?
• Collaboration technologies will lead the enhancement of customer
experience: Sharing customer data is key to building a better customer
experience. Web 2.0 technologies, which capture customer interactions and
perceptions and are shared with internal resources, will foster a more
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6. cooperative customer-facing environment. The ability to aggregate this
information on-demand makes it more accessible, more useful and more
valuable.
Since early 2007 TripleTree has been espousing that SaaS Ecosystems needed to
evolve. After analyzing the brief history of SaaS, including product announcements
and a few seminal vendor consolidation activities, two shared attributes between
what SaaS Ecosystems were providing and where SaaS Platforms were evolving
rose to the surface: Marketing Services and Customer & Partner Support.
Breaking down this assessment further, we became convinced that the two
missing pieces from early SaaS Ecosystems were key definitional components for
SaaS Platforms: Design & Development and Operational Management.
SaaS Ecosystems: A network of technology partners aligned around a mutually
beneficial marketing or technical approach to customer communication, The timeline below offers an illustration
acquisition, and support. of several milestone events occuring
during the evolution from SaaS
SaaS Platforms: An embedded infrastructure to support the development and Ecosystems to SaaS Platforms. They
management of SaaS applications including software development kits (SDK), were influential in defining TripleTree’s
operational management capabilities and automated processes for solution SaaS Platform Framework.
administration, customer communication, marketing, acquisition and support.
Bill Gates: “We’re entering the ‘live era’ of software”
Orace - first Fusion apps
Google - Apps for Your Domain
NetSuite - SuiteFlex
Salesforce.com - sForce 2.0
Salesforce.com IPO
Salesforce.com - APEX - Cisco acquires WebEx
- Facebook - Connector
Sun - Grid
Amazon - E2C / S3
Oracle - Fusion
2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008
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TripleTree’s SaaS
artner Suppo
SaaS Ecosystems
Platform Framework
FUNCTIONS FUNCTIONS
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7. As with any guide, TripleTree’s Framework (as introduced on the previous page)
is only one example and we encourge CEOs to build proprietary scorecards
benchmarking how platforms can help their businesses unleash value. The list
below includes the technology providers TripleTree has identified as promoting
either a SaaS Platform vision or roadmap. TripleTree expects this list to change
markedly in the coming quarters as vendor consolidation continues.
Platform Vendor Description
Adobe (Flash, Flex) Primarily a document processing/management toolset.
Amazon (AMS, E2C, S3) Best described as “hardware as a service” via cloud computing.
A network approach to leveraging the assets of WebEx and
Cisco/WebEx (Connect)
data infrastructure.
eBay Online marketplace for reduced friction e-commerce.
It’s “walled garden” approach and proprietary development language for
Facebook (Connector) collaboration applications departs from its roots as a social networking
site for college kids.
The master disruptor of traditional business application and information
Google (Apps/OpenSocial) management models; its Open Social framework allows developers to write
apps across numerous social networks.
HP (Business Technology It’s Business Availability, Quality Center, Performance Center and Project
Optimization) and Portfolio Management Center aren’t yet well known.
Their broad portfolio of software and services is focused on enabling
IBM (Blue Cloud, Lotus)
business transformation and IT alignment.
Still trying to become a relevant SaaS solution provider rather than a
Microsoft (.Net and Live)
platform/infrastructure vendor.
Recent IPO will be further validation for Larry Ellison as to the viability of
NetSuite (SuiteFlex)
SaaS and mid-market solutions.
Offering infrastructure components to support SaaS delivery including
OpSource hosting/data center, integration capabilities, administration, billing and
partnerships.
Oracle (Fusion) Though acquisitions, unabashedly trying to own the stack and offer web-
based services from database through middleware and applications.
As an investment bank, TripleTree
Development and deployment platforms for building SaaS business
considers many criteria when assessing Progress Software (Open Edge)
applications and related support services.
the relevance of a technology-enabled
Trying to expand their relevancy beyond ERP and large enterprise
business and its likelihood of building SAP (Business by Design)
customers.
shareholder value. When looking at the
Well publicized Force.com initiative is a large undertaking and a departure
operating dynamics of SaaS businesses, Salesforce.com (Force.com)
from its well documented application-only path to success.
it is clear that a number of basic industry
Sun (Grid) A utility computing pioneer offers Computing On Demand solution.
metrics have changed including (but not
limited to) revenue recognition practices,
sales compensation plans, vendor On the following page we have listed the four core components of the SaaS
accountability, purchasing models and Platform Framework and provided some context and questions to help emerging
partner economics. vendors considering a SaaS Platform partnership.
PAGE 6 Q1 2008 SAAS PLATFORMS MINNEAPOLIS 952.253.5300 WWW.TRIPLE-TREE.COM
8. Design and Development:
Web-based software design and development approaches theoretically allow an
easier integration roadmap for partners and users because of Service Oriented
Architecture (SOA) and other architectural standards like XML, Java and Ruby.
Large vendors may at first appear to be an enticing SaaS Platform partner, but
evaluating them on the merits of their actual technology and partner support
model is more critical than size and notability. In addition, large vendors who are
messaging around “SaaS as an on-ramp to on-premise migration” must be viewed
critically and in opposition to those firms espousing an iron-clad commitment to
SaaS.
Below are a few questions best-in-class firms need to ask when assessing the design
and development capabilities of a SaaS Platform:
• Underlying Technology and Model:
○ Assuming a sound commitment to supporting platform partners, is
the underlying technology based on standards?
○ Is it scalable and portable, can “lock-in” constraints be avoided and
are special programming languages required?
○ Will partners and users be permitted to sell and support outside of
the SaaS platform?
○ Do testing and QA tools exist?
○ What are the service level agreement (SLA) benchmarks for
hardware scalability, reliability and processing power?
• Business Model:
○ What is the platform vendor’s business model and motivation for
pushing its platform?
○ Does it make long term financial sense to align with a platform
vendor?
○ Are data center hosting capabilities and redundancies proven?
○ Because some application domains such as compliance will rely
on a cohesive alignment between SaaS, licensed software and
professional services, is this accounted for?
○ Does the platform offer an offline component to its solution in order
to coexist and interoperate with on-premise applications?
• Integration and Certification:
○ The ability to quickly define, build, deploy and certify customized
SaaS objects will likely be a centerpiece for most SaaS Platforms.
How can integration partners design and develop into the platform?
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9. Operational Management:
New players are attempting to establish themselves in roles traditionally handled
by perennial platform vendors like IBM and Microsoft. Today, Amazon and Cisco/
WebEx are examples of newcomers providing web and middleware enablement
platforms to help ISV’s build SaaS applications.
Below are a few checkpoints for CEOs to consider:
• Complexity:
○ Making business applications scalable and reliable is a complex and
ongoing endeavor. From the bottom to the middle of the technology
stack, the following functions require a systematic, managed
approach – configuration management, database management,
analytics, security, reporting, provisioning and billing.
○ Complexity also derives from the platform’s adherence to standards
and common programming approaches. Caution is advised as
platform vendors integrate their development environments and
constructs.
• Business Continuity and Governance:
○ Are back-up and retrieval technologies for digital files and other
assets in place?
○ As hardware, network, telco and managed services vendors begin to
assemble these technologies within their ecosystems; are security,
taxonomy and privacy considerations well supported?
○ What document management tools are available?
• Infrastructure Model:
○ Cloud computing lies at the intersection of grid computing,
virtualization, SaaS and other utility constructs that enhance an
operation while driving down costs and pricing. How well does
the platform partner understand these technologies and business
models?
○ Does the partner offer a cloud computing infrastructure similar to
Amazon’s Enterprise Compute Cloud (E2C) solution?
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10. Customer & Partner Support:
For most vendors whose SaaS Platform aspirations were well known, 2007 was
about signing up partners and 2008 will be about making sure those partners
are successful. Because many emerging SaaS firms are operating with little or no
venture capital investment, they are scrutinizing sales and marketing expenditures
and require unique support beyond the design, development and operational
management drivers previously noted.
A focus for the emerging SaaS firm (and traditional licensed ISV) is on calibrating
the ideal value proposition for its target market. As SaaS Platforms mature,
customer and partner support will be measured innumerable ways, including but
not limited to:
• Communication:
○ Because of its direct link to the user, SaaS Platforms will need to
over-communicate with all constituents and promote a mechanism to
capture and react to direct feedback. Are product roadmaps, customer
feedback, software engineering templates and strategy guidelines
established?
○ How are human-based customer service and basic operational functions
such as account registration and self-service modules supported?
• Business / IT Alignment:
○ SaaS Platforms that support alignment across an extended enterprise
will aid in business process improvements and efficiencies. Because
this alignment will encompass a number of administration functions
like order processing and help desk/contact center support, what are
the templates for addressing and implementing simplistic change
management and training solutions?
• Contract Terms:
○ With SaaS, a “customer wins” mentality usually corresponds with
strong recurring revenues and market leadership. For partners, the
SaaS Platform vendor should approach client needs with a holistic
solution in mind and establish responsibilities and performance For most vendors whose SaaS
objectives around the solutions’ lifecycle. Platform aspirations were well
known, 2007 was about signing
○ Are terms both customer and partner friendly and are price controls up partners and 2008 will be
and royalty schedules clearly defined? about making sure those partners
are successful.
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11. Marketing Services:
Business development for most SaaS and on-premise ISVs comes from user
awareness, lead development and solution adoption. To successfully support
these processes, SaaS Platforms require applied thinking and tools that support
direct and channel-based sales technologies for their partners. In addition, these
technologies need to link with revenue recognition rules, sales compensation
engines, and partner support programs.
For SaaS vendors and ISVs, marketing support features are an important piece of
a SaaS Platform:
• Departmental Linking:
○ As part of its Dreamforce ’08 event, Salesforce.com announced
the evolution of its Force.com platform to build-out a multi-tenant
business network by essentially linking core sales automation
users with adjacent departments (marketing and customer service)
and partners. This type of service is a key enhancer for marketing
productivity and provides timely information to executives on the
customer experience and business development.
• Additional Resources for Key Target Markets:
○ Many discreet vendors do not have the resources to reach all
markets. How are complementary partner resources emanating
from the SaaS Platform provider as a critical source of new business
development?
• Measurements of Success:
○ Assessing the viability of a relationship with a SaaS Platform vendor
has many components, but revenue contribution should be chief
among them. How are scorecards going to be built to measure joint
marketing events, joint press releases, sales leads, partner referrals,
new revenues, bookings, renewal revenue and competitive wins?
PAGE 10 Q1 2008 SAAS PLATFORMS MINNEAPOLIS 952.253.5300 WWW.TRIPLE-TREE.COM
12. DIFFERENTIATING SAAS PLATFORMS
TripleTree has identified six features which differentiate SaaS Platforms beyond
the four core Framework components listed on the preceding pages. As yet,
no single vendor has an organically grown SaaS approach that addresses all six
of these functions. Thus, we predict near term acquisitions in these areas led “When it comes right down to it, SaaS
by global vendors intent on building a leadership position and SaaS Platform- ecosystems and platforms offer differing
centric solutions. business benefits for ISVs.
TripleTree SaaS Platform Framework Differentiating Features: The fundamental value of a SaaS
platform is to help aspiring SaaS vendors
accelerate their time to market by giving
nt Op
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Administration Compliance
Compliance
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nt
Content
Content Analytics
Analytics The purpose of a SaaS ecosystem is
to enable the participating companies
to expand their market reach. At an
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tom
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Collaboration
Collaboration Workflow
Workflow their SaaS capabilities by linking with
vic
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ecosystem should give the participants
ort
additional channels to market as well as
greater market visibility via the partner
• Administration functionality (e.g., registration, security and billing) are as network.
important for SaaS enablement as data integration, quality assurance and
testing. The relative value of SaaS platforms
versus ecosystems depends on the stage
• Analytics and actionable intelligence services will separate the winners from of life of the SaaS vendor. Start-ups will
the losers in many SaaS domains and verticals. gain greater benefits from a SaaS platform
than an established SaaS vendor that has
• Collaboration technologies are the caulk linking knowledge workers, data already built their own code and delivery
and their workflow. capabilities. Established players will gain
greater value from SaaS ecosystems which
• Compliance is enmeshed in our risk-aware Business / IT culture and is enable them to new reach customers.”
impacting C-Suite decision making.
• Content is packaged, marketed and monetized to create meaningful revenue – Jeff Kaplan,
streams for many SaaS vendors. Founder, THINKstrategies &
Senior Advisor, TripleTree
• Workflow tools within purpose-built SaaS infrastructures allow businesses to
build more services while spending less time on software integration.
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13. DECIDING TO ALIGN WITH A SAAS PLATFORM
CEOs of start up SaaS firms are advised to consider aligning with a SaaS Platform
before they expend large amounts of financial and human capital in building
their own infrastructure. Once product and feature level determinations have
been established, identifying and selecting a relevant platform can begin. Just
as SaaS vendors tell their customers not to worry about their operational IT
infrastructure to run a SaaS application, SaaS vendors themselves must follow
the same rules and not worry about building a development and management
infrastructure. Said differently, develop in SaaS and deliver in SaaS.
Courting Developers
SaaS Platforms are trying to convince emerging and established SaaS vendors
that they are well-suited to offer an application development and support
environment. As IT users and engineers test the limitations of tools emanating
from these platform vendors, the primary measure of success will be the number
of users and organizations who actually build applications on the platform. If
SaaS Platform vendors do succeed at offering a standards-based development
environment, they will more easily attract developers and quell instability or
scalability concerns about “running off the edge of the platform.”
Maintaining Simplicity
A concern for some SaaS customers is that as SaaS becomes more feature rich
and widely accepted, it will become too complex and harder to purchase and use.
TripleTree is closely watching how platform vendors and their partners continue
to align application functionality and infrastructure stability as cornerstones for
a simple, reliable, secure and extensible environment.
SaaS Platforms Are Already Evolving
The table on the next page lists a handful of representative transactions where
SaaS Platform vendors are adding platform functionality through acquisitions.
Develop in SaaS and deliver in SaaS.
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14. function Buyer target description
Administration OpSource LeCayla OpSource acquired on-demand billing vendor LeCayla to support its success-
based (unit-based) pricing model. LeCayla supports online billing and
automated customer on-boarding capabilities, which is a rarity among current
SaaS Platform vendors.
Analytics eBay Fraud Sciences PayPal will build out it’s proprietary fraud management capabilities with this
acquired technology and leverage some of the engineering and management
that created it. This acquisition will also help eBay to increase the reliability of
its fraud management software.
Collaboration Cisco WebEx Cisco moves up the stack to add industry leading conferencing and
collaborative capabilities to its growing unified communication platform.
WebEx’s proprietary and robust MediaTone platform can now harness the power
of Cisco’s collaboration initiatives and massive network foundation to lead this
dynamic marketplace.
Compliance Google Postini Google is making a quick transition to the mainstream enterprise environment.
Postini brings strong presence in email security, Web security and policy
enforcement thereby making Gmail a serious email management platform for
enterprise consideration.
Content Salesforce.com Koral Koral brings on-demand content management to Salesforce. Salesforce will
leverage this addition as the ContentExchange and it will encompass Koral’s
complete solution. While content management seems to stray from Salesforce’s
focus on CRM, it adds underlying unstructured content management to
Salesforce Apex and makes it a more dynamic platform.
Workflow Progress Actional Adds Web services discovery and visibility, measurement, security and policy
enforcement to Progress arsenal. On the outset, Progress can re-sell Actional’s
solution into its customer base. Progress will focus on its synergies with Sonic
and later Open Edge. Deeper integration of the Sonic and Actional technologies
is planned, and they’ll eventually be sold together as an SOA platform.
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15. CONCLUSIONS
The debate about the relevance of SaaS is over. As on-demand solutions further
entrench themselves into the day-to-day operations of most organizations, SaaS
Platforms are emerging to promote, implement and support features developed
by third parties.
Best-in-class SaaS firms evaluating when and how to align within a SaaS Platform
should consider a decision framework (TripleTree’s SaaS Platform Framework is
just one example) as a roadmap to establishing objectives for both application
engineering and support.
The Importance of SaaS Platforms
Vendor differentiation based on up-time, performance and technical robustness
will soon become secondary to business function and execution. SaaS Platforms
promise:
• A lower cost of entry for start-up vendors. This will lead to more competition
and innovation in every domain category and industry vertical.
• Higher user acceptance of SaaS as enterprise class up-time becomes the
norm. This will lead to wider and deeper adoption with both large and mid-
sized customer organizations.
• Easier integration with other ISV’s operating on the same SaaS Platform.
Technical synergies between partners on a common platform will provide a
broader functionality footprint and lower implementation costs.
The Future of SaaS Platforms
SaaS has evolved beyond a disruptive delivery model and now impacts nearly
every domain and industry vertical. As best-in-class vendors continue to
innovate, they will look to SaaS Platforms as an outsourced option for everything
these firms need to support product design, engineering, launch, marketing and
support.
SaaS Ecosystems will continue to exist, but those not evolving into Platforms
will be relegated to simply marketing relationships and the meaningful pre-
integration or joint development needs of ISVs and their customers will be
served by SaaS Platforms.
TripleTree anticipates that the number of SaaS Platforms will grow in the near
Vendor differentiation based on term and then shrink to less than ten vendors over the next few years, similar to
uptime, performance and technical the evolution of IT hardware platforms of the late 1980’s.
robustness will soon become
secondary to business function
and execution.
PAGE 14 Q1 2008 SAAS PLATFORMS MINNEAPOLIS 952.253.5300 WWW.TRIPLE-TREE.COM
16. Recommendations for Best in Class Vendors
When evaluating SaaS Platforms, it is important to consider that some pioneering
missteps will occur as vendors address both business and technical challenges.
The SaaS market as a whole is in adolescence and SaaS Platforms are maturing
as well. Thus, SaaS Platform vendors are serving the dual masters of attracting
ecosystem partners and growing revenues, while maintaining a stable operating
environment and containing costs. Below are a few additional thoughts for
emerging SaaS CEOs.
• Clearly identify business goals and assess gaps. Determine the types of
services needed to fill these gaps and propel your business to growth and
profitability.
• Talk to other ecosystem partners. A quick discussion with the CEO from
a small or mid-sized firm within a SaaS Platform ecosystem can be an
invaluable exchange. Most partners are readily listed in a partner directory
on the platform vendor’s web site.
• Set realistic performance objectives. At this early stage, no single platform
vendor can support the range of technology and process needs for its partners,
but realistic performance objectives can be established and measured.
• Maintain consistency in messaging. Consistent messaging can help build
competitive differentiation. By ensuring that your core messaging remains
aligned with that of your platform vendor, the full value of a SaaS solution
can be better articulated.
As an investment bank and strategic advisor, TripleTree is committed to helping
emerging companies understand how to take advantage of macro-trends and
optimize strategic opportunities through M&A or with growth capital. We
welcome the opportunity to learn more about your business and how we can help
your shareholders climb to the next plateau of market leadership.
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17. THE TRIPLETREE TEAM
Kevin green, managing Partner
• Co-founded TripleTree, LLC
• 25+ years building and advising IT companies
• Senior executive roles in public and private IT companies; two as CEO
• Active with numerous industry associations, and Board of
Directors, including SIIA and Connextions
• BA and MBA, University of San Diego
david henderson, managing Partner
• Co-founded TripleTree, LLC
• 22+ years in venture capital, business development and as a
senior operating executive
• Seven years of public accounting experience at Arthur Andersen
• CEO of a $400 million asset bank holding company
• Active Board of Director on several public and private companies
• BA, Moorhead State University; Certified Public Accountant
chris hoffmann, senior Principal/research director, technology
• Joined TripleTree in 2005
• 19+ years of experience an operating executive, consultant, and analyst in
the technology industry
• Transaction activity focus in the areas of software and technology
• Former President of Tier1 Research; executive positions at Gartner,
GE Capital Consulting and IBM Global Services
• BA, University of Minnesota-Duluth; advanced studies through
the University of Minnesota and Michigan State University
Brian Klemenhagen, senior Principal
• Joined TripleTree in 1999 with over ten years of combined investment
banking and Wall Street equity research experience
• Primary engagement manager across technology, software and
outsourcing sectors
• Principal contributor to TripleTree’s SaaS research
• Prior to joining TripleTree was with RBC Dain Rauscher
• BA, Gustavus Adolphus College; MBA, Carlson School of Management,
University of Minnesota
PAGE 16 Q1 2008 SAAS PLATFORMS MINNEAPOLIS 952.253.5300 WWW.TRIPLE-TREE.COM
18. scott donahue, Principal
• 15+ years financial strategy analysis and business development consultation
including marketing, operations support, and technical product development
• Expertise in IT operations and services delivery approaches
• Wall Street experience
• Served in management roles at leading IT firms
• BA, University of California - Santa Barbara; MBA, University of Michigan
scott Prentice, associate
• Focus on M&A and private placement activity in the technology sector.
• Previously worked on M&A activity at Ingenix, a division of
UnitedHealth Group
• Prior experience included technology capital investment at Target
Corporation and as an IT consultant with Computer Science Corporation
• BA, Bethel College; MBA, Carlson School of Management, University
of Minnesota
michael Boardman, senior analyst
• Specializes in research and analysis of industry trends and investment
opportunities within Software and IT Services
• Prior experience includes an internship with Merrill Lynch
• Held a Cisco Certified Networking Associate Degree (CCNA)
• BA, Carlson School of Management, University of Minnesota
matthew flores, senior analyst
• Dedicated to research and analysis within Enterprise Software, Telco,
and Wireless
• Research and transaction experience with TripleTree’s Healthcare and
Mobile Wireless Teams
• BA, Bates College
Jeff Kaplan, senior advisor
• Advises TripleTree’s technology team
• Founder and Managing Director of THINKstrategies
• Founder of the Software as a Service (SaaS) Showplace® and Managed
Service Showplace®
• Founding member of the SIIA SaaS Executive Council
• Frequent speaker at industry events and contributing columnist for
BusinessWeek, Mass High Tech Journal, Financial Times of London, and
Network World, among many other industry leading publications
WWW.TRIPLE-TREE.COM MINNEAPOLIS 952.253.5300 Q1 2008 SAAS PLATFORMS PAGE 17
