It is clear to me the shift to Software as a Service (SaaS) is a big challenge for ISVs; a business model the market will force on them.

SaaS is a subject that I am interested in given my 28+ years experience in the software industry. I have seen all sides of the issue, working for and with ISVs – rolling-out ERP packages and as an application developer. But most of all, my 20 years experience of building and selling application development tools tells me the ISV business model will change fundamentally.

I founded ISVfocus.com Limited in 2007 to offer publishing, training and consulting services to European independent software vendors (ISVs) that sell business software for vertical niches--and specifically, to ISVs moving to SaaS.

ISVfocus.com Limited currently has two web properties:

• paasTalk: Platform as a Service news for European ISVs
  
  The new paasTalk blog is for European ISVs and helps them to evaluate, select and use Platform as a Service to build and deploy the next generation of SaaS solutions for their vertical niche. paasTalk delivers the latest independent news and views on PaaS, with an emphasis on the cultural, legal, financial and technology challenges that face European ISVs moving to SaaS.
• ISV Survival: Putting trust first to win at SaaS
  
  The ISV Survival blog is about trust–the most critical part of SaaS for B2B ISVs. This blog delivers news, reviews and original content on SaaS trust. It covers service level agreements, dashboards, reporting, metrics, SLA tools and more.

Before founding ISVfocus.com Limited I worked for Delta Software Technology GmbH (DSTG), which I joined in the middle of 2002. DSTG is a German ISV for generative programming tools and domain-specific languages. In 1994 DSTG got the rights to the DELTA product family. I worked on this application generator earlier in my career, so met some familiar faces.

DSTG had a strong product development group, but had problems bringing new products to market. My job was to improve the products business, so I updated the product positioning and created new collateral.

At the start of 2003 DSTG appointed me VP International Business Development. My mission was to expand distribution channels. I worked closely with current and new partners to consolidate the installed base. I supported the sales teams in Germany and Switzerland to win new business.

I travelled a lot for DSTG. This time it was in Europe doing out-and-back trips the same day, so not too bad.

Looking back at my time at Delta, Dynasty and then DSTG there have been dramatic changes in how ISVs and end-users build enterprise applications:

• In the 1980s customers with big in-house development teams spent large amounts of money to buy and support development tools.
• In the second half of the 1990s the market changed; systems integrators (SIs) were doing most application development, and they were reluctant to spend any money at all on development tools.
• The open source movement was in full flow at the start of this decade. Customers will no longer pay money for development tools. Excellent open source tools, such as Eclipse and Subversion, make it increasingly hard to argue otherwise.

Ignoring all the technical changes, selling enterprise-class application development tools is now almost impossible. The easy years selling expensive software licenses with 25% annual support fees (that come in for many years or even decades) are over. In my view they are never going to return.

Before DSTG I worked for Dynasty Technologies Inc., which I joined in 1996. Since 1995 Dynasty and Forte had been fighting to win market-leader position for enterprise-class C/C++ application generators for the client/server market. Both companies had venture capital backing and were growing rapidly.

I moved to Paris in France to lead Dynasty's new international support organization. My team's role was to provide level one and two support for Dynasty's customers, distributors and partners in all countries outside the USA.

Many of our customers and partners were ISVs; they used Dynasty's application generator to build business software for vertical niches. As the customer base expanded, my role grew to include pre-sales, sales and marketing support. I worked closely with our international distributors, often visiting them to support selling to new customers.

I acted as the main technical link between our non-USA customers and the Dynasty development labs in Houston, USA. My role as European-CTO meant that I was travelling to the USA about once every three weeks. My frequent flyer accounts started to explode from all the flying I was doing. In 1998 I moved back to the UK, and then in 2000 from the UK to Germany.

I was flying to the USA on September 11th 2001. We were about one hour from New York when, without warning, our plane landed in what turned out to be Newfoundland off the coast of Canada. We were there for nearly a week before we could continue our flight to New York. We could still see the smoke rising from Ground Zero when we arrived at Newark airport.

At Dynasty I had the opportunity to become involved with venture capital companies. As well as working with some of the venture capital firms who had funded Dynasty, I pitched the company to potential new investors. I was proud to have played a key role in a funding round that raised USD 15M for the company.

A VC story: Dynasty was in Houston, Texas. We were preparing the next funding round and we were pitching to some of the leading local venture capital investors: Compaq and Enron. Unfortunately, our funding round was exactly at the time Enron exploded! Around the same time HP bought Compaq; who suspended all their new VC projects. We had to look elsewhere for funding...

My international role continued to expand; Dynasty appointed me as Director of Strategic Projects. Following successful projects with some of our leading ISV customers Dynasty promoted me to Vice President of Strategy. My responsibilities grew to also include global marketing; when I left Dynasty my position had changed into Vice President Strategy and Marketing.

Before working for Dynasty I made my first move into the application development tools market in 1988 when I joined Delta Software International Ltd. Delta was an ISV that developed and sold the DELTA/ADS application generator.

In the late 1980s DELTA was one of the leading enterprise-class COBOL application generators; used by large enterprises around the world. It had a dominant market share in the German speaking countries thanks to the closely knit IT market in Switzerland where DELTA had its origins.

I joined Delta to lead the team developing support for the IBM CICS target. This role quickly expanded and I was soon managing the UK development team. I moved to the German development office in 1990. Around 1992 a new owner of the group spun-out the development organization into IBSI CASE Development GmbH. My role grew; when I left Delta I was Development Manager for all DELTA products.

I learned a lot at Delta about working with an international sales and marketing network. Many of our customers were ISVs who used DELTA to write business applications for vertical niches. This gave me good insight into the needs of ISVs and the challenges they had moving applications from older technical architecture to the next-big-thing. For example, from host-based applications to PC, and then to client-server.

Before Delta I worked for Synapse Computer Services plc, which I joined in 1985 as senior application development consultant. Synapse was the market leader in IBM systems programming; they wanted build on this and offer application development services to the existing customers. I gained good experience in the pre-sales and marketing areas as we build the application division.

I worked on many customer projects, mostly on IBM mainframes using CICS. I was able to work with some of the leading IBM experts. This gave me a solid foundation for the future.

At Synapse I worked mostly for financial services and manufacturing customers. I worked on projects that rolled-out three of the main ERP packages at that time--a good way of learning about how ISVs build business software for vertical niches. As usual some projects needed 24x7 support with urgent support calls at night and weekends.

Before Synapse I worked for Computer Management Group Ltd (CMG), who I joined as a consultant in 1982. I developed insurance applications for IBM mainframes using the CICS TP-monitor. The applications we were working on were running 24 x 7 and of course this involved support calls in the middle of the night!

For each project at CMG I developed project-specific tools to make our work more effective. These started as simple edit macros but quickly expanded into a full template-based program generator. This taught me a lot about building, and using, tools in real projects.

I started my IT career in 1980 as programmer for Mullens & Co, one of the oldest City of London stockbrokers. We wrote programs for stock research in COBOL and FORTRAN, running on an ICL mainframe.

Mullens was unusual as it had a long history of developing system software. This included AIDA, an advanced domain-specific language for actuarial research. Mullens also developed their own application middleware--what we would now call a framework.

This early exposure at Mullens to system software, frameworks and tools in general was the start of my career-long interest in system software and application development tools.