DocZone.com provides an XML based authoring environment for teams of technical or other business writers. Incorporated into their solution is document management, translation services, workflow, XML WYSIWYG editing (obviously), checkin/checkout, and other typical document management system services. DocZone.com actually offers a compelling product for the market segment that eschews system ownership as an unwanted IT investment. This is an excellent mid-size company model.
Now for the rub.
The software behind DocZone.com is off-the-shelf software written by another company. The services offered by DocZone.com are just that, services! The software behind DocZone.com is licensed from X Hive and XML-INTL.
This Software as a Service (SaaS) business model isn’t new, but it is certeinly more mainstream nowadays. SalesForce.com is one of the classic examples of a SaaS company, but they built their own software. The model springing up enables a company to be built on re-branded software, some machines, and hosting capabilities (although this could also be contracted easily enough), and a voice at the end of the 1-800 number.
The early adopters of this model served up things like .Net Nuke and other portal systems. Software verticals are now clearly at play and that means big money in the genuine B2B market. Care to guess the monthly licensing cost for 1 concurrent seat of DocZone.com?
Who wants to start company?
David,
I wish it was as easy as you make it sound! The key to “Software as a Service” success is to put the emphasis on SERVICE. This means hiring top-notch experienced staff with excellent customer relationship skills and a strong technology and standards-based background.
By the way, we have done a lot more than just repackage off-the-shelf third party software. We have invested years of effort to seamlessly integrate a number of tools, along with a significant amount of our own code to enhance the products that we OEM. We offer a number of features that the core products do not offer if you purchased directly from the suppliers.
Dan Dube
Managing Director, US Operations
DocZone.com
I certeinly don’t mean to imply there is no value add in the model that DocZone represents. I mean to draw attention to the incredible opportunity this business model represents.
Finally, an online company is able to build value in infrastructure, services, workflow, and availability rather than proprietary software development. This is the bread and butter of brick and morter retail specialty shops. THink about it, now we can have the mom and pop hardware store, but online.
This is an incredible time in the software industry because the things we are making are finally useful beyond our single domain!
Cool, eh?