Justin Pirie - Director of Communities and Content at Mimecast and one of the best SaaS minds in the world - sent me the results of some research they published today. The report is titled "2010 Mimecast Cloud Barometer Survey" and the research was conducted by Loudhouse Research. You can grab a copy of the PDF here - its behind a lead capture form but it is definitely worth giving up your precious contact information for.
Loudhouse surveyed 500 IT decision-makers to see how corporations view their data, how they manage the email systems that transmit information, & where cloud solutions fit into the landscape of corporate data management. For SaaS vendors, like Mimecast, this can really help you shape your messaging and understand how your customers are thinking. If your marketing, pricing, distribution methods, etc. are not aligned with the customers' expectations and requirements, no matter how good your product is, you will likely fall short of your sales goals.
Some interesting points I took from the report and my comments...
- Cloud usage is up - 51% of respondents say they use cloud compared to 36% in October last year. I think this is significant since those surveyed were IT staff and they typically under report the cloud usage compared to the "business side" - purchasing, accounting, departments, etc.
- In terms of usage- our survey found Email (62%), security (52%) and/or storage (50%). CRM used to be the gateway drug for "the cloud" - but now they say its email, security, or storage. Obviously this is skewed a little bit because it was the the IT side of the business that was surveyed. On the "business side" - whatever that is - there are probably new gateways drugs beyond CRM - probably utility or narrow-band horizontals like Yammer or YouSendIt. Email, storage, etc. are the low-hanging fruit of the IT department that could be moved to "the cloud" much easier than core business applications, especially proprietary or highly modified versions of commercial apps. Of course, this result is great for Mimecast which sells an service that enhances Microsoft Exchange.
- In terms of planned usage - 66% of respondents said they were considering starting to use or increasing use of "the cloud". What was interesting though is that 29% of people who aren’t using cloud today are planning to in the next year. I think that number will grow, and could change substantially in the next couple of months as 2011 corporate budgets are reconfigured. For IT shops looking to begin migrating some of their infrastructure to "the cloud" I think they are going to be looking heavily at their existing infrastructure investments to see if there are ways to leverage "cloud-like" technologies to extend the life of that equipment. Without starting a debate about whether or not private clouds exist or if "hybrid" is a word that should be used in the context of "cloud," the reality is that a vendor that recognizes this reality and can help the IT group deal with it - perhaps using virtualization to slice up and extend the life of on-prem hardware while offloading the low-hanging fruit mentioned above like storage, email, etc. they'll be more effective than coming in and saying "move everything to to cloud now!"
- Finally, the cost argument is back... 73% think their IT infrastructure costs are lower with cloud. Well, if you have a premium service or high-overhead and can't compete on price against some of the more commoditized services like Amazon Web Services, how do you compete? How do you differentiate your offering in a way that takes the focus off of the cost and puts it on the benefits? If you really understand your customers needs and wants, and understand their value perception of your product, you can price in line with that value perception. And don't think that "cheap" or "commodity" services like AWS don't have value-based pricing. Of course they do - their value is in being cheap (per unit). Is that the value your product or service brings? You need to be aware of this when developing your pricing.
Great research and thanks to Mimecast for publishing it and thanks to Justin Pirie for giving me a sneak peak. Oh, and if you are a "cloud" vendor and need help with your pricing or marketing strategy, contact us to get started today.
Author: Lincoln Murphy (@lincolnmurphy on Twitter)