On Nov 13th MGI Research is hosting an intensive half-day, invitation-only “21 conference” focused on technology and business innovation in SaaS.

While much of the focus of SaaS is on services that are driven off a browser, there is nothing inherent in the model that prohibits programmatic access to structured web services with a defined business functions. We are begininng to see an evolution of a market for complex business functions offered on a web as a service. One of such services is Monetization, i.e. ability to perform complex calculations over the web for functions such as billing, sales compensation, benefit/pension calculations, complex revenue splits, etc. etc. Examples in the business world abound and range from stock exchange transactions to cell phone billing to sales commissions for complex products.

In the past such processing was largely handled by programs embedded inside monolithic ERP products or custom coded by enterprises. In both cases, the cost for anything robust was prohibitive for most small and medium sized businesses. Now, with a cloud-based offering, many midsize and some small firms will have access to very flexible calculation capabilities.

One of the companies focused in this space is MetraTech. We recently hosted the CEO of MetraTech Scott Swartz for a 20 Questions session during which we discussed the merits of this emerging opportunity.

On July 25th 2012 MGI is hosting a webinar on Platform as a Service (PaaS) trends.

Platform as a Service or PaaS is being touted as the express elevator to faster development, integration and deployment of Cloud applications. In the past, integration middleware was largely the domain of large companies as it required a significant upfront investment. Integration costs often added upwards of 60% of the total cost of a business application. PaaS promises to transform the economics of cloud application integration and delivery. Is PaaS a fundamentally new, must-have technology with a clear ROI or is it just a repackaging of old concepts retro-fitted for the cloud?

In a research note published last night - SAP Buys Ariba – A Fallen Angel Finds an Exit, we analyze the merits and metrics of this transaction and the impact on SAP customers, investors and competitors.

There is a very decent, albeit not foolproof treatment of Salesforce.com (CRM) on SeekingAlpha.com. The article looks at number of relevant accounting red flags but sometimes fails to interpret those correctly or put them into context. Some of commentary following the article highlight the discrepancies.