The Research On The Methods Of Strategic SaaS Transformation For Hosting Service Providers

The hosting service providers have relied on their professional services in domain registration, shared hosting and enterprise mails to push forward the information processes in enterprises. Based on those experiences they have accumulated a reasonable scale of enterprise customers and have grown steadily. However, the rapid spread of Internet and the constant emerging technologies make the enterprise applications become more diversified and specialized. SaaS, as an innovative software application model, provided the solutions to the issues that occurred in many key areas like HR, cost control, and technical supports etc. It becomes a direction to lead the industry development and an emerging market where all service providers compete. Traditional ASPs (Application service provider) have to face the challenges even the threats caused by SaaS model itself and its rapid spread, to respond to the changing environment and new business model's impact, they are planning to transform their business model to adapt change.This article discusses the research on the methodology of strategic transformation of SaaS to the hosting service providers. The theories related to the strategic transformation are explained; the competitive and environment analysis has been done by using PEST and SWOT based on the current situation of the hosting industry. It is clear that the strategic transformation to SaaS model to hosting service providers is necessary and feasible. However, there are risks and issues involved during the transformation, through careful studies the article proposed a fundamental framework and general methodology to deal with the risks and issues. That includes:the planning of SaaS product selection, the technical guarantee measures of SaaS businesses; the SaaS-oriented quality management system and the evaluation to the SaaS strategic transformation process etc. The successful case of "the Modulized Web Site" of HiChina was studied in this article to present a real example and a best practice to hosting service providers as a reference to guide enterprises during their transformation.