The document discusses how software vendors can gain valuable customer insights from tracking usage data in cloud-based software as a service (SaaS) applications. It outlines some of the challenges of collecting this data for SaaS applications compared to on-premise software. Analyzing usage data can help vendors improve products, marketing, pricing, and renewals. However, many vendors currently do not have systems to accurately assess customer usage. The document provides examples of how usage data has helped other vendors build better offerings, find new business opportunities, increase customer satisfaction and improve sales.
1. Cloudy with a Chance of Insight: An ISV’s Guide to
Customer Usage Data Collection and Analysis
in the Cloud
wHitEpapEr
Executive Summary
“SaaS now accounts for a The right entitlement management service and user management tools can instantly
whopping $9 billion share of improve your business processes and customer insight by simplifying your billing process,
the roughly $30 billion cloud while tracking customer usage, feature usage trends, regional usage, and much more. These
computing market – representing features ultimately provide critical data to assist organization-wide decision making.
the largest segment in cloud
Publishers of on-premise software have, for many years, experienced the benefits of mining
computing.”
usage data to improve their business. Vendors of SaaS applications, however, are experiencing
-Forrester Research Inc., firsthand, some of the unique challenges of gathering this type of data for their hosted
July 2010 applications. This paper focuses on SaaS growth and the challenges of gathering customer
insights—whether on-premise or in the cloud. Also discussed are the types of data that can
be useful, and examples that help illustrate the business value of harvesting and analyzing
usage. The paper goes further to present SaaS vendors with robust solutions for gathering
customer insight.
SaaS and the Cloud are Here to Stay
There is no doubt about it, cloud computing and SaaS are on the rise. Software vendors
offering their application software as a service are part of a disruptive cloud-computing trend
that has noticeably changed the software marketplace and the way we consume software.
Industry analysts agree. Forrester Research recently reported that SaaS now accounts for a
whopping $9 billion share of the roughly $30 billion cloud computing market—representing
the largest segment in cloud computing.1
An ISV’s Guide to Customer Usage Data Collection and Analysis in the Cloud Whitepaper 1
2. Cloud taxonomy & Market Distribution
Level of
sharing
Public
Cloud IaaS PaaS SaaS PaaS Pure Cloud
@global Market
provider $460m $150m $9.0b $100m
Virtual Dynamic Integration- Dynamic Dynamic
Private infrastructure as-a-service apps BPO
Cloud services services services
@dedicated
provider $4.5m $80m $3.0b $5.0m
Extended
Cloud Market
Private infrastructure Middleware Apps BP
Cloud virtualization virtualization virtualization virtualization
@in-house tools tools tools tools
data center
$2.1m $250m $3.3b $2.1m
Infrastructure Middleware Applications Information
and processes
Source: Forrester Research Inc.
“The Evolution Of Cloud Computing Markets” July 2010 report
ISVs realize that their business strategies need to include SaaS to stay competitive. In fact, a
“60% of software publishers recent industry study, prepared jointly with IDC, revealed that 60 percent of software publishers
recognize that their licensing recognize that their licensing practices will need to adapt to the cloud over the next couple of
practices will need to adapt to years, and 30 percent expect that the change will be significant. 2 So let’s take a look at some of
the Cloud over the next couple of the drivers behind SaaS adoption.
years, and 30% expect that the
change will be significant.” the Drivers of SaaS adoption
According to Forrester Research, there are currently three megatrends that are transforming
Sandhill Group Web Site,
and reshaping the entire technology industry.3 And it is these trends that are also driving cloud
October 2010
computing and SaaS adoption.
“There are currently three mega- the industrialization of it – More than 70 years ago manufacturing processes were
trends that are transforming and industrialized and we see a similar transformation happening today in information technology.
reshaping the entire technology IT processes and resources are becoming more standardized, more globalized, and more
industry. And it is these trends commoditized. And as with any function that is not regarded as a core competency or
that are also driving cloud differentiator, it’s either removed or outsourced. You move it somewhere else; You move it into
computing and SaaS adoption.” the cloud, for example. Cloud computing is an interesting model and opportunity that supports
the industrialization of the entire IT industry.
Forrester Research, Inc.
October 2010 technology Embodied in the Business – Over the years technology has become more and more
embedded in our business processes. As a result, business people are much more involved in
driving technology decisions and are actively involved in every step of the product selection
process. Where in the past, IT made all technology decisions and implemented new systems, it
is much more common today for business people to drive and be heavily involved in technology
decisions. In fact some of the earliest adopters of SaaS were business people that sought out
solutions to problems for which internal IT resources had not been allocated.
technology populism – This driver describes our insatiable appetite for information and
the ability to access that information from anywhere, at any time, and on any device. Cloud
computing has given us this ability. Using the Internet and a simple Web browser, we can send
e-mail, check a customer order, set up a new lead nurturing campaign, do our personal banking,
buy a birthday gift, read a book, update our status, and more. And we can do all of this using any
number of devices—PC, smartphone, laptop, e-reader, gaming system, tablet. Cloud computing
makes it all possible.
There is also the economic situation. We seem to be in the recovery phase now, but budgets
are still tight and companies are restrictive in their spending in an effort to cut costs. We, in the
software industry, know firsthand that the last few years have been quite a challenge. Forrester
An ISV’s Guide to Customer Usage Data Collection and Analysis in the Cloud Whitepaper 2
3. points out that software maintence costs are often a popular place to cut. “Vendor managers,
“Vendor managers facing facing onerous cost-reduction targets, want to reduce the amounts they pay to software
onerous cost-reduction targets, companies for annual maintenance. They don’t understand how software companies can think
want to cut the amounts they that their maintenance business should be immune from the recession.” 4
pay to software companies
for annual maintenance. They What do companies do when money is tight? Many look for financial models where they can
turn large upfront capital expenditures into more bite-sized ongoing operational expenses, have
don’t understand how software
small financial risks, and be agile enough to scale back expenses if they need to. Nothing to
companies can think that their
depreciate and zero on the balance sheet. Software as a service supports a financial model that
maintenance business should be
reduces financial risk and capital expenditures—a phenomenon that favors cloud computing.
immune from the recession.”
Gartner recently recognized these drivers, “We have seen slightly more emphasis on software
Forrester Research, Inc.
as a service (SaaS) due to tight capital budgets and the use of smartphones to drive
May 2009
salesperson adoption.” 5
“We have seen slightly more the importance of tracking Customer Useage
emphasis on software as a Monitoring and analyzing useage can help ISVs fine tune retention marketing strategies, enforce
service (SaaS) due to tight contract compliance and improve customer relations. Proactively monitoring and optimizing
capital budgets and the use license useage and compliance helps your customers eliminate the unnecessary cost of
of smartphones to drive licensing under-used software or shelfware while also avoiding over-use situations and the
salesperson adoption.” costs associated with “trueing-up.”
Gartner, Inc. According to a recent Sandhill Group research report6, customer renewal was identified as a
July 2010 top challenge by software CEOs in 2010. This reinforces how important it is for ISVs to more
proactively mine useage data to gain valuable customer insights which have the potential to
ensure contract renewals and even increase sales.
“Customer renewal was
Intelligence gained from usage data is invaluable when it comes to SaaS renewals and reducing
identified as a top challenge
churn. Used to develop and fine-tune ISV business strategy, this intelligence can help to
by software CEOs in 2010.”
prioritize development efforts, evolve business models, improve the user interface, add features,
Sandhill Group improve training, and user documentation, introduce metered billing, and more.
April 2010
the Challenges of Gaining Customer insights
Some ISVs are accustomed to measuring and analyzing usage to help guide their business
“Up to 60% of ISVs do not have
strategies, and improve software product and service offerings, but many are not. A recent industry
systems in place to accurately
research study2 revealed that up to 60 percent of ISVs do not have systems in place to accurately
assess how customers are
assess how customers are using their software. Let’s take a look at some of the challenges.
using their software.”
Software On premise
Sandhill Group Web Site,
Gaining customer insight for on-premise software today is often times a challenge because so
October 201
much of the sales process is self-service – via ecommerce resellers or downloads from the
ISV’s Website.
Fortunately, there are other channels in the traditional on-premise software business that
provide the software vendor with a lot of these answers — though the feedback framework is a
manual process with many dependencies. Typically there’s an implementation service provider
who has a very strong link to the customer and knows exactly how the solution is used – at
least in the first phase when it’s implemented. In addition, there is usually an account manager
who has a pretty good understanding of the customer’s situation. And then there are help and
customer service desks which sporadically receive feedback. Because this is a manual feedback
framework, the commnunication often times breaks down.
Another method to capture customer insight is implemention of a commercial software
licensing and entitlement management solution. Many have functionality to capture and report
on software license usage. If required, another method to gain usage intelligence is to initiate
a software license audit.If required, another method to gain usage intelligence is to initiate a
software license audit. So as you can see, for publishers of on-premise software, it can be a
challenge to gain direct insights.
An ISV’s Guide to Customer Usage Data Collection and Analysis in the Cloud Whitepaper 3
4. Software in the Cloud
In the SaaS environment, these channels do not really exist. With cloud computing, there is
typically no implementation service provider. In most cases, there won’t be a dedicated account
manager. So where do the questions get answered? With SaaS, customer insights need to come
directly from the customer site. To enable this communication, the software needs to have a
feedback mechanism that answers questions about usage – what is used and how it’s used.
These types of insights help ISVs adopt licensing business models, and further improve the
software service.
In this case, of course, the vendor is responsible for the data collection, the security of this data,
and the compliance and governance processes for which the data is collected.
To complicate things even further, the dynamics of the channels have totally changed. A SaaS
solution from a software vendor typically sits on a platform. Often times the platform belongs to
the SaaS vendor but it doesn’t necessarily have to come from the same software vendor. If the SaaS
vendor does not have a middleware stack, he will leverage another platform as a service, from a
PaaS vendor. And that vendor may leverage the infrastructure from someone else, an infrastructure
as a software (IaaS) vendor. There might be another telecom vendor involved, a service vendor. And
that is the interesting (and sometimes confusing) part of cloud computing. Each of these vendors
can actually be the customer-facing entity that packages everything together and delivers it to
the customer. The cloud presents many challenges for all partners in this ecosystem when trying
to gain customer insights to improve solutions and portfolios and strategies.
Linear vs. Continuous Business processes
In the traditional on-premise software business the various business activities and business
processes are linear in nature. These linear processes that stop at certain points work in favor
of the ISV. When maintenance contracts expire, customers either renew or consider upgrading to
the newest release.
On-premise Business processes are Linear
risk & Operations Management process
Business Risk
Invest Tracking
Plan Assessment
The risk and operations management process begins with the business plan, risk assessments,
investment and finally, tracking.
Development process (1x per year on average)
Development follows release cycles of about one year on average. The planning step is first,
followed by development, testing, and then software release. Once released, the planning for the
next release starts.
Planning Development Testing Release
pricing & Licensing process (1x every 5 years)
Pricing and licensing models are set about once every 5 years on average. First there is upfront
licensing revenue and then a continuous maintenance stream.
Licensing Maintenence
An ISV’s Guide to Customer Usage Data Collection and Analysis in the Cloud Whitepaper 4
5. Sales process
the sales process begins with an rFi and progresses to an rFp, offer, negotiation, and signature.
RFI RFP Offer Signature
Service & Support process
The service and support process starts with implementation, moves to a support package with
fixes, and then on to upgrade.
Implement Fixes Support Pack Upgrade
SaaS Business processes are Continuous
Software as a Service business processes are continuous, with the invent, develop, license,
deploy, and support process are running in parallel. There is no escape from the customer for the
SaaS vendor. The customer is in constant consumption mode, and the software vendor needs to
stay in contact at all times to provide continuous ongoing services.
Invent
Support Develop
CLOUD
Deploy License
With the SaaS business model, since the revenues are streaming and the investments are also
done on a continual basis, SaaS vendors operate using a continuous portfolio planning process.
The development process is a continuous process that requires continuous risk management.
Even though business plans are created up front, they are very fluid and can adjust, based upon
customer insights, with each development iteration.
SaaS license models are pay-as-you–go, and are typically based upon usage—by the month,
day, hour, etc. With the right customer insight, cloud computing offers ISVs the opportunity to
change this metric and actually choose one that is more aligned with the customer’s business
value objectives. Examples include reduction of the sales cycle, inventory levels, increase in
sales volumes, or any other metric that can be directly measured.
The sales cycle is also continuous and operates via different Web-based channels. Likewise,
channel support is continuous.
Measurement Leads to insight Strategies
Customer insight can help you in four direct and measurable ways. It can help you build a better
offering. It can help you find new ways to do business. It helps improve customer satisfaction. It
improves your sales relations.
An ISV’s Guide to Customer Usage Data Collection and Analysis in the Cloud Whitepaper 5
6. Building a better New ways to do
offering business
CUSTOMER
INSITE FOR..
Improved Customer Improved sales
Satisfaction relations
Let’s now take a closer look at the benefits of customer insight and investigate some real-world
examples of each of these.
Customer insights Help You Build a Better Offering
Building a better offering really touches many different parts of your software company—from
R&D to Marketing to Sales Support.
Product investment is multi-faceted and is typically handled by product management. As a
product manager, you want to know which features to invest in. Very often, you are dealing with
a list of hundreds of features and user stories, which need to be prioritized. Knowing which
features customers are actually using makes prioritization much easier.
As a product manager, you also want to be sure that you are maximizing your R&D investment
by improving the features that customers are actively using. And just as important is to divest
efforts on the features that none, or very few of, your customers are using.
Another consideration, if you have a broad range of products that support a broad range of
platforms, is to use licensing to better understand which platforms your customers are using.
This, of course, helps during the planning stage. For example, it could help you decide whether to
release your Windows version and your Mac version at the same time. However, if only 10 percent
of your customers are using the Mac version, you may then decide to delay the Mac release in
favor of adding or enhancing another feature or functionality.
Some ISVs develop and monetize content as part of their software offering. Here it’s important
to understand what content to further invest in. Take, for example, a software company that
builds software to help you design various rooms in your house. This ISV provides the design
software, and then monetizes the various room packages (content)—kitchen, living room,
bathroom, etc.
Another consideration is version investment. For this, you’ll need to know the following:
• How many versions back do I support?
• How long do I support it?
• How much do I invest in moving a customer from one version to the next?
• How many customers are on that old version?
Monitoring usage data is invaluable in providing this type of insight and can help you better
invest in your software product. You’ll also gain a better understanding of your customers, which
leads to a better-marketed offering. What do we mean by that?
If you know your regional trends, you can reach out more effectively to those regions that are
using a feature in a particular way. For example, if you have a popular feature in Japan, then your
marketing message for that feature in that region should be clearly emphasized. Conversely, in
China a different feature may be popular so you would put more emphasis on that message.
Understanding where features are popular, helps you better target your message. In addition,
through the use of software license management, many ISVs use product registration to capture
information such as industry vertical and the roles of those using the software.
An ISV’s Guide to Customer Usage Data Collection and Analysis in the Cloud Whitepaper 6
7. Once you identify the vertical market, you can then look at your customer base and determine
which markets and roles within the companies are using which features, or which markets use
which bundles of your software. Any insight that you can acquire can help you fine-tune your
messages to better market and promote your products.
Beyond R&D, and beyond marketing, usage data can help you in other areas, such as sales and
support. If you have high or low growth in a region, it might trigger you to invest more sales
support there. If you determine that you don’t have the support team necessary to hit your
growth objective, then you’ll need to invest properly to do so. As you can see, building a better
offering involves means more than just R&D.
Customer insights provide You with New ways to Do Business
Customer insights can provide you with new ways to do business. In the cloud there’s a lot of
talk about consumption. And consumption has really changed the game. So far we’ve seen three
different consumption models.
1. time-based consumption. Software vendors are selling tokens of time to use their software
and creating token bundles based upon how the customer wants to consume the software—
per day, per week, or per year
Let’s look at an example of an ISV offering project management software—software for
projects that can go multi-year, with many different contributors per project. What we’ve
seen is that these tokens (of time) are consumed by many individuals coming on and off of
those projects at different points in time – an interesting model to adapt.
2. Execution-based consumption. Number of executions is another consumption-based
model. How many times are you going to use a feature or an API, for example? When we talk
about PaaS, what traditionally was sold as middlewarerequired a perpetual type of license.
Now those offerings can move into an execution type of scenario. How many times are you
going to use a certain API call to provide you value? And I can monetize that.
3. Content-based consumption. The third type of consumption is content. An example of
thisis a CAD or a design type of software where you can use modules based on the design,
and then monetize those on an execution basis, such as the number of times that you use a
particular design.
In addition to these consumption models ISVs are also supplementing their perpetual models by
allowing peak concurrency. For example, you have an enterprise customer that has purchased
100 concurrent licenses to consume your software, Which means 100 people can use the
software simultaneously. As time goes by, and in the cloud especially, it’s important to remember
that no one wants to experience a denial of service. Even if you go over your license limit, you
don’t want to be denied service, especially if you’re in the middle of a business process.
Instead, as a software vendor, you can allow your customer to overdraft their concurrency
limit, and then monetize that overage. For example, your customer licensed 100 users, but for
every user over that limit, they will pay a per-day rate. And, of course, you can supplement and
monetize your content in much the same way as it is continually updated.
The most important thing to understand with this approach is that usage gives you a uniform
policy for monetizing your value across any delivery method. So as technology is moving forward,
mobile usage is changing how people are consuming services, and the value and the demands
on those services. Virtual environments are also affecting business-to-business applications.
For traditional on-premise installed applications, and as services move to the cloud, we need
to be aware of how customers want to consume them. Usage is a uniform way to do business
regardless of the delivery platform. Whether you’re consuming the service from a mobile device
versus an on-premise install, versus the cloud, it doesn’t matter. Usage-based consumption is
the foundation for new, flexible, and profitable ways to do business.
An ISV’s Guide to Customer Usage Data Collection and Analysis in the Cloud Whitepaper 7
8. Customer insights improve Customer Satisfaction.
From a customer’s point of view, I need to know what I purchased, where it’s deployed, what
licenses are installed, and who is using those licenses. I also want to know how long my
licenses are being used and if we’re efficiently managing our costs. Having this knowledge is
advantageous because these are the things that are constantly going through your customer’s
mind. Being able to provide this usage information and the licensing capabilities that make
it clearis extremely valuable—so valuable that it’s a feature you can monetize. It’s also a
competitive featurethat can be used from an asset management aspect of licensing and
usage for your customers.
Software information and knowledge helps you become a more proactive partner and give you a
better understanding of deployment issues. For example, if you perform a licensing audit and see
that after three months only 5 of the 100 licenses that were purchased are actually deployed and
installed, there may be a technical issue a lack of training. Perhaps your customer has raised an
issue with technical support that has not made its way to you.
As a business leader, gaining an understanding and being able to perform those types of checks
allows you to become a proactive partner rather than just another vendor in reactionary mode.
You can reach out to customers and say, “I noticed this issue. Is there something we can do to
help you? Would training help? Is there a technical problem?”
Monitoring usage information can also help you to better understand where your customers
are running into errors. What messages are they encountering? Are they encountering those
same messages repeatedly? Customer insights can help you improve your products, your
documentation, and your training.
Mining usage information can also help you make your software easier to use. Understanding
how users interact with your interface, knowing who’s using which parts, allows you to remove
complex components of your interface, streamline it, and provide your customer with the best
interface possible.
Historical usage data can also provide for better support planning. It gives your support team an
idea of what your adoption rate is when you release a new version or what the gap is from when
you release a new version of software to when the majority of customers actually start using it.
Having this information up front helps support teams better schedule training so they are better
prepared to support the customer, especially in global environments.
Customer insights improve Sales relations.
Having a consolidated view of your customers, their contracts, and their software and service
licenses can help improve your sales relations. As a business owner or sales person, having this
information at your fingertips, without having to look through the multitude of contracts that have
been signed over the years, gives you the insight to know who’s on support, what licenses they
purchased, and where they are being deployed to avoid regional price erosion problems.
ISVs selling to global customers may sell a license that gets deployed in China for $10.00 per
seat. That same license, if deployed in the U.S., carries a price tag of $50.00 per seat. Having
and monitoring usage information allows you to better understand where those licenses are
being deployed, so if you’re selling to a global company, and that customer buys in Asia but is
selling into a high-priced market like in the U.S., it highlights a problem that you can discuss
with your customer.
And, of course, there are always up-sell opportunities. Understanding where a customer is in
regards to their licensing limits helps you better approach them about purchasing additional
licenses. If you see through the usage information that a license is being moved from one
computer to another, to another, to another, and it’s an on-premise node-locked license, or a
SaaS license is getting reassigned to many different users day in and day out, that might indicate
a usage issue that the customer is at their limit and is trying to stay compliant. That type of
information enables you to go back and have an informed conversation, and better understand
their needs.
An ISV’s Guide to Customer Usage Data Collection and Analysis in the Cloud Whitepaper 8
9. Customer insights can also help bring you closer to your customer. Having a better understanding
of what your customers are using and how they’re using it, while also giving them the ability
to understand their usage, sets a foundation for easy return-on--investment conversations,
as well as how they are mapping the value of what you’re providing to the cost of what you’re
charging for it, which can improve the relationship.
Being More proactive – a Customer insights Checklist
Take a look at the checklist that follows. Ask yourself these questions. These are just some of
the insights that can be gained by monitoring software usage data–actionable intelligence
that will not only help improve your business processes and strategies but will also improve
customer intimacy and in turn, reduce churn.
Who are my customers?
What have they purchased?
How do they consume my service?
Do they know what they purchased?
Which features are they using?
Which features are they not using?
When are they up for renewal?
Do they need more licenses?
Do they know what upgrades are available?
Do I know how to improve my product & service offering?
Can I monetize my offering based on usage?
Can I suppory consumption-based billing?
This checklist is by no means all inclusive but it should get you thinking in the right direction.
Feel free to add to the checklist based upon your own objectives.
Sentinel: the Solution for Customer insights in the Cloud
Before SaaS, data collection was a premium feature of most software licensing and entitlement
management systems, used to forecast trends and make informed business decisions. In the
cloud, usage data is not only used for business intelligence but is vital for supporting business
critical processes, such as billing. It is, therefore, essential that cloud service providers are able
to easily track, organize, and report on service usage.
While cloud service providers are running into many of the same challenges faced by on-
premise software delivery several decades ago, the software licensing and entitlement
management systems used for on-premise applications are not the perfect fit for SaaS.
SafeNet Sentinel®Cloud Services
Sentinel Cloud Services make it quick and easy for SaaS providers to define their service catalogs,
provision and control user access at the feature level, measure service usage for billing and
business intelligence purposes, and instantly adapt their service catalog to embrace new and
evolving market opportunities.
An ISV’s Guide to Customer Usage Data Collection and Analysis in the Cloud Whitepaper 9