Earlier today, SoftWatch Technology, an Applications Usage Analytic software company, announced the expansion of its offering to SMB organizations. I had some time to discuss the company and its solution with Co-CEOs, Uri Arad and Moshe Kozlovski. The key takeaway of this interview is that SoftWatch is seeing more and more organizations, particularly on the SMB side, move to Cloud services.
We began our conversation, however, with a bit of background on SoftWatch. Up until recently, SoftWatch focused on helping enterprises with over 1000 employees transition to the Cloud and take advantage of new technologies. They quickly realized, though, that SMBs were the ones moving to Cloud more often, due to pricing and software features that don’t require a large IT staff. The solution: repackage the original enterprise offering for SMB.
"We have invested considerable resources in the past year to provide our clients unique services with significant business value," said Moshe Kozlovski, co-CEO of SoftWatch. "Now that we have direct access to the SMB market, we intend to further invest in adapting our services to fit the unique needs of this huge market segment. Our mission is to support all enterprises in making more informed decisions that are based on application usage information, allowing them to optimize their end user computing environment and substantially reduce their spending on software assets.”
So what does it do? Well, the SoftWatch solution allows SMBs to assess current use and adoption of cloud services, and then manage the progress and optimize moving additional resources to the Cloud. Their software can help SMBs migrate to either Office 365 or Google Apps. On the Office 365 side, there’s a particularly attractive feature with the company’s solution process. The process will actually suggest the optimal Office 365 suite price plan for the customer’s needs. This information is based on current usage, broken down by how often SMB employees use/read/edit applications, as well as a projection of future needs.
Interestingly, SoftWatch reported that, of the 40,000 current users, 80% fell into the “Light editor” or “view only” categories. Moshe explained that this is actually a strong argument for moving to the Cloud, as the web-based applications do not need to provide as many sophisticated functionalities for these light users. I asked Moshe and Uri about which solution they’ve been seeing more SMBs move to, Office 365 or Google Apps. It’s important to note here that SoftWatch is a neutral company. Moshe did explain that, although they don’t see the full market, they have been noticing more SMBs moving to Office 365, as the price point can change based on company needs.
My next question was about getting the solution out. Moshe explained that SoftWatch does have a partner program available for a variety of resellers, including Office 365 and Google Apps resellers, and that most of their sales do come through the Channel. In addition, resellers may be paid on commission for bringing in leads, or they can do a pure resell and completely own the lead. More information about the SoftWatch Partner Program is available here.
"We are very pleased to introduce our analytics solution to the SMB market segment and make it easy for them to purchase and start using our software right from our website,” said Uri Arad, co-CEO of SoftWatch. “Our SoftWatch Benchmark now has 400,000 users and it is consistently showing that companies are overspending on MS licenses and can save substantially by transitioning to cloud-based alternatives. We believe that our solutions can help smaller companies to better manage their software assets and optimize their IT spending.”
A big thank you to Uri and Moshe for taking the time to speak with me about this news!
