Get Ready for Another Big SaaS Year

The Boston SaaS community is preparing for what experts are calling an epic year in Cloud Computing. One indication was a packed house at Tuesday night’s “Building a Successful SaaS Business” networking event and holiday party. 

Hosted by VentureFizz and sponsored by Communispace Corp, the event gave SaaS business professionals a chance to rub elbows with moderator Fred Destin, Partner of Atlas Ventures, and a stellar trio of successful cloud CEOs including Phil Beauregard of Objective Logistics, Andrew Burton with Logentries and our very own Backupify CEO, Rob May.

“#SaaS is the future of tech in my opinion,” said Burton.

Gartner is predicting serious growth with SaaS spend to increase to an estimated $32.8B (by 2016). More centralized cloud security, bring your own encryption, and cloud-to-cloud backup are all estimated trends for 2014 according to Forrester Research. It’s no wonder the event drew a crowd of smart and tenacious entrepreneurs looking to learn more.

So in an environment that changes rapidly, what comes first in building a successful SaaS business – clients or products?

Beauregard advises you need to do whatever it takes. His first big client was Not Your Average Joes and many black eyes resulted when the company catered to very specifically to their needs. But Objective Logistics focused on one particular problem they were having and built from there.

May agreed, speaking to Backupify’s recent shift from supporting consumer applications to a B2B model. “We had to make a decision and we went with GoogleApps for businesses,” said May. “We listened to the market.”

Having the ability to adjust your business based on the changing needs of a client or to reflect market trends happens often when building a SaaS business.

As 2014 is right around the corner, we look forward to another “cloudy” year!