Update : I’ve reposted some of my findings in the spreadsheet below. Let’s just say Google Finance isn’t the most reliable.

How are public SaaS companies faring in this economic environment?

Here are some stats that I put together based on Q2 ‘08 earnings data from ten SaaS companies, including SalesForce.com, DealerTrack, NetSuite, Taleo, Omniture, Vocus, Salary.com, Kenexa, Concur and Constant Contact:

• Median Quarterly Revenue Growth : 6.5%
• Median Yearly Revenue Growth : 39.4%
• Median Gross Margin : 69.0%
• Median Operating Margin : -0.9%

Year-over-year revenue growth was rather strong across these SaaS companies. Profitability is another story, but that’s a topic for a separate post. You can see some of the underlying data here.

Now, let’s take a closer look at three earnings announcements from last quarter:

We can’t start a SaaS discussion without first looking at poster child Salesforce.com. Salesforce.com had a good second quarter with revenues of $263M, which was 49% year-over-year growth, and put the company at a $1B+ run rate (a SaaS first). The earnings translated to $53M in operating cash during the quarter, an increase of 53% year-over-year. No major changes on expenses. SG&A and R&D were at 64% and 9% of total revenue, respectively.

Salesforce.com added 4,100 net new customers bringing the total to 47,700. Not only did the customer numbers increase, but so did contract sizes. Of note, Dell signed the largest deal in company history, a three-year global contract. This is a bit surprising given the macro environment today, but increasingly larger customers are requesting these types of deals. Revenue diversification across customer size, geography, industry and services mix also continues to be a top priority for the company. International business now represents 28% of revenue, up from 24% a year ago. Overall, a rather rosy picture for the company in a tough economic period.

Taleo also had a good quarter overall. The company recorded revenues of $38.8M, representing 25% year-over-year growth. Software accounted for 80% of total revenue, 21% growth from a year ago. On the expense side, R&D and sales and marketing costs were flat. Sales and marketing came in at 30% of total revenue. Both R&D and G&A were approximately 19%.

The company added 25 new enterprise customers and 10 enterprise deals with a first-year pricing greater than $250K. Taleo also continued to focus on expanding its international customer base. International revenue came in at 13% of total revenue, representing year-over-year growth of 83%. Last, the company completed a major acquisition of Florida-based Vurv, a direct competitor. The acquisition was partially funded with approximately $44M in cash relating to the proceeds and repayment of $9M in debt.

NetSuite posted solid top-line results for the second quarter. The company’s revenue grew 43% year-over-year to $36.6M. Non-GAAP net loss for the second quarter was $900K, a 34% improvement year-over-year. Cash flow from operations for Q2 was negative $1.8M as compared to positive $1.5M from the previous quarter. This was primarily due to tax liabilities as a result of the OpenAir acquisition. For expenses, product development was 10.6% of total revenue, an increase of 8% mainly due to the additional headcount from the OpenAir acquisition. Sales and marketing was 51%, an increase of also 8% over Q1 as the company is hiring salespeople aggressively along with increasing marketing spend. G&A was 12.6% of revenue for the quarter.

NetSuite has done a good job increasing the average selling price per customer. In Q2, NetSuite added more than 400 new customers with an average annual contract value for new sales at $30K, up from $20K a year ago. International business also increased to 20% of total revenue for the quarter.

Research firm Datamonitor released its annual survey of IT spending this week and predicted that 50% of organizations will be freezing their 2009 IT budgets with another 13% anticipating cuts. Given the turmoil with the nation’s economy and troubled financial markets this didn’t come as a surprise to anyone.

So, how does this affect SaaS companies selling into the enterprise? Let’s take a look at a few key factors and see how SaaS companies stack up.

• Pricing – This is top of mind for most customers today. Customers don’t want, and now are unable to sign, multi-million dollar deals. If that’s your model, then expect longer sales cycles. SaaS solutions have an advantage here since typically they have lower upfront pricing with a recurring revenue stream (e.g. monthly) spread out over the life of the contract. The exception are those SaaS vendors that require multi-year multi-million dollar contracts. From a customer’s view, they fall in the category with the traditional software players and will struggle.
• Criticality – If it isn’t clear whether your solution is a “need-to-have” or “nice-to-have” you’ll quickly find out. Customers will only open their wallets to vendors that help them drive the top line, reduce the bottom line or have significant strategic importance. That’s it. While this isn’t specific to SaaS companies, I thought I’d mention since *most* SaaS solutions aren’t deemed “mission critical” (e.g. CRM). Most customers are still skittish with moving their core systems and data to SaaS. In time, hopefully this will change. Companies like NetSuite are paving the way.
• Flexibility – Customers don’t want to be locked into software. Period. There was an interview a month or so back given by Lawson Software’s CEO, Harry Debes, where he predicted the downfall of SaaS in 2 years time and mentioned this point.
  

  It isn’t about locking people in. People lock themselves in! They see the software, like it, and want it. This is true of all professional software. The cost of moving is too high. As long as it’s working, people are happy to stick with one product.

  I disagree. This is traditional software thinking and it blows my mind. Those days are long gone. Application migration costs are lowering. Vendors who provide significant value, but don’t hold their customers hostage will succeed. The SaaS pay-as-you-go approach is ideal and resonates with many customers.

• Delivery – Customers want to get up and running quickly. SaaS deployment times are typically much lower, especially with single instance multi-tenant approaches. More often than not a customer’s needs will change over time so it’s important to get the software in the hands of the customer as soon as possible.
• Costs – SaaS companies are at a disadvantage here. They have high upfront costs with lower revenues. Customer breakeven is further away. So, if you are a SaaS company keep a close eye on your bottom line and remember cash is king. One benefit is that a SaaS company will have a more transparent and predictable recurring revenue stream. Use that advantage and plan accordingly.

In a future post, I’ll cover SaaS economics and how several public SaaS companies are faring.

One of the most exciting developments within Business Intelligence (BI) software is the emergence of Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) or On-Demand solutions. More and more vendors are offering their software via an on-demand model. SaaS has touched virtually every category of BI, including but not limited to analytics, dashboards, data mining and data warehousing. Customers want shorter deployment times, lower implementation fees and flexible solutions. They are sick of broken promises and expensive software installations with unattainable ROIs. At the same time, vendors gain predictable cash flows, greater visibility into how customers are using the software and one platform to support. Of course, SaaS doesn’t come without its challenges. Overwhelmingly the biggest concerns are around data, namely security, integration and quality.

According to Gartner, the BI platform market will continue to grow at a solid pace during the next five years, with software revenue experiencing a compound annual growth rate of 9.5% through 2010. Gartner also estimates the worldwide total software revenue for SaaS within the enterprise software markets to surpass $5.1 billion in 2007 with strong growth through 2011 to $11.5 billion.

There has been a flurry of activity in the BI space over the last few months, including further consolidation and investment. We’ve seen two big-time acquisitions. In October, SAP announced they will acquire Business Objects for approximately $6.8 billion. Not to be outdone, IBM announced in November that they plan on acquiring Cognos for $5 billion. Investors are also starting to take notice of SaaS players. LucidEra raised $15 million, Oco $10 million, Seatab $9 million and the list goes on and on.

In 2008, we will continue to see the adoption of SaaS BI solutions in both the Enterprise and SMB markets. The SMB market is a natural target for SaaS solution providers due to their inherent cost and resource constraints. Vertical-focused solutions will also continue to thrive as domain-specific intelligence remains a key customer requirement.

I’ve highlighted a short list of vendors offering SaaS solutions.

LucidEra, Oco, Seatab Software, Dimensional Insight, OnDemandIQ, SharpAnalytics, Host Analytics, Qliktech , Visual Mining

If you are a customer using a SaaS BI solution or a SaaS BI provider, I’d love to hear about your experience thus far. Feel free to contact me.