With increasing cost of software maintenance and the speed at which new features are getting added cost-conscious IT managers are looking at the network to deliver the latest at a fraction of the cost, a model that has gained currency in the recent past is Software-as-a-Service (SaaS).

According to a recent survey by Saugatuck, the number of companies with over $1 billion revenue who are planning to deploy SaaS of mission critical applications has more than quadrupled over the previous year, from 13 per cent  to 53 per cent.

According to Gowri Shankar Subramanian, CEO, Aspire Systems, the acceptance of SaaS has created a brand new market opportunity for the outsourced product development industry in India– making software applications SaaS-ready.

Aspire Systems, an outsourced product development company, provides services in the areas of new product development, product advancement, product re-engineering, product migration, maintenance, product implementation, testing, support and documentation.

Subramanian said, “We have developed architectural and engineering expertise through our outsourced product development services. We decided to enter the SaaS market after finding that there is a demand for horizontal services in terms of moving existing or new software products into SaaS. We are developing partnerships for the technology implementation, hosting and monitoring and billing and metering aspects of SaaS migration.” For example, Aspire has partnered with Rackspace for hosting and Ondemand solutions for business consultancy. It is scouting for a partner for billing solution.

Aspire is targeting small to medium size software vendors who want to SaaS-enable their products. “Our goal is to help them with a well rounded offering. As of now, we offer technical and GAAP analysis. However, we want to get involved at a consultancy level. We are also targeting corporate users to advise them on their SaaS strategy,” said he.

He said that initial customers will be captive centers of US companies who want to outsource product development and build competencies around them and those companies in India who want to internationalize their products i.e. change the way in which software behaves in a foreign environment. “We are building competencies to analyze code base. There is also scope for engineering analysis to implement and test the products.”

Aspire is setting up small dedicated teams working towards specific competencies. The key areas of focus would be supply chain and industries with large data bases. The company will invest about Rs 50 lakh plus an additional investment in sales and marketing towards developing future competencies.