Despite Microsoft’s push toward cloud computing and software subscriptions, many companies still prefer to run software with on-premise licenses, especially companies that want to save money with one-time purchases. Unfortunately, Microsoft is ending two of the options for such companies.

Microsoft made the announcement a Partner Center document:

Microsoft is evolving the partner benefits offerings to provide partners with the tools and support they need to continue to lead the way in the shifting tech landscape. As a part of this evolution, Microsoft Action Pack and Learning Action Pack purchases and renewals will end on January 21, 2025. You may purchase or renew your Microsoft Action Pack or Learning Action Pack until January 21, 2025, and keep those benefits until they expire one year later.

Microsoft recommends the Partner Success Core Benefits and Partner Success Expanded, both of which are cloud-based alternatives.

For partners with an existing Microsoft Action Pack or Learning Action Pack, we recommend the Partner Success Core Benefits and Partner Success Expanded Benefits packages, depending on the size and needs of your organization. These benefits are designed to enhance your cloud and AI capabilities and deepen your partnership with Microsoft. Purchase a package now and gain access to over 20 key product benefits-which could include Microsoft Copilot products, Microsoft GitHub, Defender for Endpoint- starting January 22, 2025. Click here to download the benefits guide.

As one reader explained to The Register, the change will result in a significant cost increase.

“The first impact for us will be cost,” the individual said. “We’ll need to go from Action Pack (£390 + VAT) to Partner Success Core (£735 + VAT). Secondly, the benefits appear to have moved all online.

“That’s not a problem for day-to-day operations but it will make it harder when trying to recreate a customer environment with legacy software.”

The Federal Trade Commission filed a lawsuit against Adobe, accusing the company of “deceiving consumers by hiding the early termination fee for its most popular subscription plan and making it difficult for consumers to cancel their subscriptions.” The complaint revolves around Adobe’s practice of hiding the fact that customers who cancelled their “annual paid monthly” (APM) subscription in the first year would be liable for hundreds of dollars in penalties.

In an unredacted complaint uploaded by Vox, the FTC details the executive’s comments, including the fact that getting rid of ETFs would result in a big hit to Adobe’s business:

Defendants know that these inadequate APM plan disclosures harm and mislead consumers but continue to engage in these unlawful practices because better disclosures would hurt Adobe’s bottom line by reducing subscription revenues. As one Adobe executive admitted, the hidden ETF is “a bit like heroin for Adobe” and “there is absolutely no way to kill off ETF or talk about it more obviously [without] taking a big business hit.”

The FTC goes on to say that Adobe’s efforts to mislead consumers goes even further:

Adobe’s misconduct does not stop with concealing key APM plan terms to maximize profits. Adobe utilizes other onerous cancellation procedures to trap consumers in subscriptions they no longer want. Consumers attempting to cancel online are forced to navigate numerous hurdles, including hidden cancellation buttons and multiple, unnecessary steps such as pages devoted to password reentry, retention offers, surveys, and warnings. Consumers attempting to cancel via phone or chat experience dropped calls and chats, significant wait times, and repeated transfers. Adobe uses a dedicated “Retention” team to discourage subscribers who try to cancel. Adobe relies on such obstacles to thwart cancellations and retain subscription revenues, depriving consumers of a simple mechanism to cancel as required by law.

If the FTC is able to prove its case, it could have profound implications for the SaaS market, since Adobe is by no means the only company that engages in such behavior. Unfortunately for the company, having an executive acknowledge the rational behind the hidden ETFs goes a long way toward proving the FTC’s case.

Twilio credits the smartphone, and the convergence it created, for making CPaaS viable:

With the rise of smartphones, the world witnessed a seismic shift as voice calls, texts, and multimedia converged into a single device. This convergence was a turning point, setting the stage for CPaaS. As businesses and individuals alike craved seamless communication experiences, the need for embedding real-time interactions into applications became apparent. Enter CPaaS, a game-changer that harnessed cloud computing’s power to deliver APIs and SDKs, empowering developers to effortlessly integrate voice, video, messaging, and more. CPaaS emerged as a bridge between traditional communication modes and the digital era, revolutionizing how we connect and collaborate in a borderless world.

Thanks to the versatile platform in provides, it’s no surprise that Twilio was named a Gartner Magic Quadrant Leader:

Twilio’s versatile CPaaS platform spans messaging, voice, video, AI/ML features, security, integrations, and more. With a commitment to global operations, compliance support, scalability, CustomerAI capabilities, and a far-reaching partner network, Twilio plays a pivotal role in helping businesses transcend borders, work efficiently, deliver trusted communications, and connect seamlessly.

Of course, any CPaaS platform won’t do. Modern communication evolves quickly and Twilio exemplifies several factors that set a CPaaS platform apart.

37 Signals was one of the companies that led the charge to the cloud, creating popular cloud-based apps that reached widespread use and critical acclaim. Despite the company’s heritage, 37 Signals is now leading the charge in the opposite direction, hoping to usher in the “post-SaaS” era.

As part of its efforts, the company has been migrating its own services from the cloud, saving a significant amount of money in the process, according to CTO David Heinemeier Hansson.

Our cloud spend (sans-S3) is down by 60% already. From around $180,000/month to less than $80,000. That’s a cool million dollars in savings at the yearly run rate, and we have another big drop coming in September, before the remaining spend will petter out through the rest of the year.

Now compare that to what we spent on buying our own servers. We had to buy about half a million dollars worth of new machines to replace all the cloud rentals. While there are some additional other costs associated with the extra servers, it’s relative peanuts in the grand scheme (our ops team stayed the same, for example). Which means that by the basic comparison of money saved vs money spent, we’ll be in the money on the big purchase with the current monthly savings in less than six months. That’s just astounding!

Hansson says 37 Signal’s case is a relatively small one, compared to some of the tech giants who rely on the cloud.

In fact, from having looked at the unoptimized cloud bills at other software companies, our savings may in fact be modest compared to what’s possible. Did you know that Snapchat has spent three billion dollars on the cloud in the past five years they’ve been a public company? Don’t tell me there was a billion or so in potential savings on that tab. That didn’t used to matter, because who cared if the business was profitable or not, but now it sorta does!

Companies have increasingly begun to question the value of the cloud amid ongoing security concerns, runaway costs, and questions about data integrity.

If 37 Signals is successful in its efforts to usher in the “post-SaaS” era, it could represent a seismic shift in the technology industry.

SaaS has brought many benefits, most importantly a lower barrier to entry and scalable pricing. Unfortunately, however, the tradeoff is often a higher cost of ownership over the long term.

Despite being one of the companies that helped usher in the SaaS revolution, 37signals wants to help the industry move in a different direction, launching a new website: Once.com. The company makes the case that SaaS has brought more negatives than positives to the industry:

Today, most software is a service. Not owned, but rented. Buying it enters you into a perpetual landlord–tenant agreement. Every month you pay for essentially the same thing you had last month. And if you stop paying, the software stops working. Boom, you’re evicted.

For nearly two decades, the SaaS model benefitted landlords handsomely. With routine prayers — and payers — to the Church of Recurring Revenue, valuations shot to the moon on the backs of businesses subscribed at luxury prices for commodity services they had little control over.

Add up your SaaS subscriptions last year. You should own that shit by now.

The company says it is time for IT departments to take back control rather than be reliant on Big Tech:

SaaS still makes sense for many products, but its grip will slip. Installation and administration used to be hopelessly complicated, but self–hosting tech is simpler now and vastly improved. Plus, IT departments are hungry to run their own IT again, tired of being subservient to Big Tech’s reign clouds.

Once upon a time you owned what you paid for, you controlled what you depended on, and your privacy and security were your own business. We think it’s that time again.

37signals plans to launch products in 2023 on the “pay one time, own forever” model:

Introducing ONCE, a new line of software products from 37signals.

• Pay one time, own forever.
• We write the code, you get to see it.
• We give you the software, you get to host it.
• Simple and straightforward, not enterprisey and bloated.
• For one fixed price. Once.

We’ll be launching the first product late 2023, with more coming in 2024.

In the early 2000s, we were among the early pioneers leading the industry into the SaaS revolution. Now, 20 years later, we intend to help lead the way out. The post–SaaS era is just around the corner.

Walmart revolutionized the retail market thanks to its focus on logistics, fulfillment, and delivery. The retail giant is looking to make money off of its innovative solutions by selling fulfillment and delivery solutions to other retailers and teaming up with Salesforce to make it happen.

“Through this partnership, retailers can leverage the same innovative and scalable technologies that power Walmart’s pickup and delivery experiences,” said Anshu Bhardwaj, senior vice president, technology strategy and commercialization, Walmart Global Technology. “The same technology that powers Store Assist has enabled Walmart to fulfill over 830 million orders across over 4,700 Walmart stores. Together with Salesforce, retailers can scale their business and deliver the personalized, convenient experiences shoppers expect.”

“Salesforce is thrilled to partner with Walmart as it transforms its business and further expands into the digital technology market,” said Tyler Prince, Executive Vice President, Alliances & Channels, Salesforce. “Through this partnership with Salesforce, Walmart can grow its business in new ways by productizing its proven retail processes – empowering other retailers to create new and personalized experiences for their customers.” 

Walmart says retailers will be able to take advantage of three major features, including Buy Online and Pick Up In-Store (BOPIS), use Walmart GoLocal to manage local deliveries, and take advantage of Salesforce Commerce Cloud and Order Management to manage the entire omnichannel shopping experience.

“Shoppers continue to expect brands to deliver highly connected and frictionless experiences across physical and digital touchpoints. In fact, 1 in 5 online orders placed the weekend before Christmas were picked up in store,” said Rob Garf, vice president and general manager of retail, Salesforce. “With the combined power of Walmart and Salesforce, retailers can drive success with best-in-class technology to advance their omnichannel capabilities, drive efficiency and ensure that every purchase quickly gets into the hands of the shopper – no matter where they are.”

Wing Security analyzed more than 550 companies to gain insight into the state of SaaS application usage. A disturbing issue was the prevalence of “Shadow IT,” a term used for when employees use apps and services that are not provided or vetted by the company’s IT department.

According to the study, in large part as a result of Shadow IT, “in a staggering 84% of companies, employees were using an average of 3.5 SaaS applications that were breached in the past 3 months.”

Wing Security attributes this to the decentralized, easy access to SaaS apps:

This occurs because of the decentralized and ungoverned nature of SaaS applications. When an employee needs a quick fix to a problem or a tool to help them do their job, chances are they will “Google it” and find a SaaS application, often a free one or with a free version, to help them. These “quick fixes” often completely by-pass company procedures. It is important to keep in mind that as small and benign as an application may seem, it can still be connected (with high permissions) to one of the organization’s major SaaS applications such as Salesforce, Slack, Zoom and others.

Another major concern was the number of data permissions apps had, including apps that were not even in use. According to the company, some “76% of all permissions that were given to applications by the users were not in use for over 30 days.”

In many cases, the need for SaaS applications is in question, with a slight majority of such apps only being used by a single employee. According to Wing Security, “55% of SaaS applications are used by only one employee, raising questions about their necessity – and making it unlikely that they were known and protected by the security team.”

Another major concern is outside access. According to the company, “20% of SaaS users to be external to the organization. These are contractors, freelancers or agencies that your employees work with and have received access to your SaaS applications.”

SaaS use is on the rise, with many companies seeing it as a way to keep costs down while scaling to meet demand. Unfortunately, it appears the industry still has a long way to go before SaaS deployment matches the security of other options.

Walmart revolutionized the retail market thanks to its focus on logistics, fulfillment, and delivery. The retail giant is looking to make money off of its innovative solutions by selling fulfillment and delivery solutions to other retailers and teaming up with Salesforce to make it happen.

“Through this partnership, retailers can leverage the same innovative and scalable technologies that power Walmart’s pickup and delivery experiences,” said Anshu Bhardwaj, senior vice president, technology strategy and commercialization, Walmart Global Technology. “The same technology that powers Store Assist has enabled Walmart to fulfill over 830 million orders across over 4,700 Walmart stores. Together with Salesforce, retailers can scale their business and deliver the personalized, convenient experiences shoppers expect.”

“Salesforce is thrilled to partner with Walmart as it transforms its business and further expands into the digital technology market,” said Tyler Prince, Executive Vice President, Alliances & Channels, Salesforce. “Through this partnership with Salesforce, Walmart can grow its business in new ways by productizing its proven retail processes – empowering other retailers to create new and personalized experiences for their customers.” 

Walmart says retailers will be able to take advantage of three major features, including Buy Online and Pick Up In-Store (BOPIS), use Walmart GoLocal to manage local deliveries, and take advantage of Salesforce Commerce Cloud and Order Management to manage the entire omnichannel shopping experience.

“Shoppers continue to expect brands to deliver highly connected and frictionless experiences across physical and digital touchpoints. In fact, 1 in 5 online orders placed the weekend before Christmas were picked up in store,” said Rob Garf, vice president and general manager of retail, Salesforce. “With the combined power of Walmart and Salesforce, retailers can drive success with best-in-class technology to advance their omnichannel capabilities, drive efficiency and ensure that every purchase quickly gets into the hands of the shopper – no matter where they are.”

Software as a service is an increasingly important part of the remote and hybrid workplace, and is only growing in popularity. Unfortunately, properly securing SaaS applications can be a logistical nightmare. In fact, citing research from Better Cloud, Microsoft points to the 59% of security professionals that struggle to manage SaaS security.

Microsoft believes the key lies in protecting data within cloud apps, rather than just focusing on cloud access security. The company has expanded the scope of its Defender for Cloud Apps to help provide that layer of security.

Today, we are excited to announce that Defender for Cloud Apps is extending its SSPM capabilities to some of the most critical apps organizations use today, including Microsoft 365, Salesforce,3 ServiceNow,4 Okta,5 GitHub, and more.

Another important component of Defender for Cloud Apps is the ability to help personnel research configuration best practices for SaaS app security.

To streamline this process, Defender for Cloud Apps launched SSPM in June 2022 to surface misconfigurations and provide recommendations to strengthen an app’s posture.

In preview starting today, Defender for Cloud Apps now provides security posture management for Microsoft 365, Salesforce, ServiceNow, Okta, GitHub, and more. Not only are we expanding the breadth of app coverage but also the depth of assessments and capabilities for each application.

The tight integration within Microsoft 365 Defender will give organizations security across the full scope of their operations.

That’s why Defender for Cloud Apps is natively integrated into Microsoft 365 Defender. The XDR technology correlates signals from the Microsoft Defender suite across endpoints, identities, email, and SaaS apps to provide incident-level detection, investigation, and powerful response capabilities like automatic attack disruption. The integration of SaaS security into an XDR experience gives SOC teams full kill chain visibility and improves operational efficiency with better prioritization and shorter response times to ultimately protect the organization more effectively.

DocuSign experienced rapid growth during the pandemic as record numbers of people worked remotely, making digital document signing a critical component of day-to-day operations. As many companies have experienced, however, with the economic downturn has come a reduced need for many of the products and services that were flying high just months before.

The company described the layoffs as a “restructuring plan”:

On February 16, 2023, DocuSign, Inc. (the “Company”) announced a restructuring plan (the “Restructuring Plan”) that is designed to support the Company’s growth, scale and profitability objectives. As part of the Restructuring Plan, the Company expects it will restructure and reduce its current workforce by approximately 10%, primarily in the Company’s worldwide field organization.

Interestingly, the company expects to pay $25 to $35 million to implement this plan:

The Company currently estimates that it will incur charges of approximately $25 to $35 million in connection with the Restructuring Plan, consisting primarily of cash expenditures for employee transition, notice period and severance payments, employee benefits, and related costs as well as non-cash expenses related to vesting of share-based awards. The Company expects that the majority of the restructuring charges will be incurred in the first quarter of fiscal 2024, and that the execution of the Restructuring Plan will be substantially complete by the end of the second quarter of fiscal 2024.

Thankfully, there are a number of solutions that can help make this process far easier to that end. What follows is a list of some of the best SaaS development solutions that will assist software development teams with improving their processes across the board.

Preview Environments

One of the key SaaS development solutions that can help improve a team’s processes has to do with preview environments. These are on-demand, cloud-based environments that allow for the testing of new features before they’re merged together into the larger solution.

They’re designed to be short-lived and used for a single purpose – indeed, they only exist as long as they’re needed to test a new feature, address a bug, and perform similar tasks. Not only can they dramatically reduce the amount of time it takes for troubleshooting, but they also speed up the process of merging new features together as well.

The Power of Dashboards

Because of the very nature of SaaS development, it’s always important to maintain a “bird’s eye view” of what is going on. But with so many different people working simultaneously on disparate tasks, doing so via the “old school” method of constant emails and progress meetings can only delay the proceedings, not help speed them up.

That’s why custom dashboards are so good for this particular use case. Not only can they help you keep track of every task someone is working on, but they can let you see as much as possible at a glance about the project as a whole. You can see if people are on task with the deliverables they’ve been assigned and, if they’re not, you can easily check in to see if any assistance is needed before things get delayed too much.

Many dashboard solutions also allow you to create your own custom widgets so that you can have the metrics that matter most to you rise to the forefront. You can use pie charts, graphs, and more – all to visualize project data in a way that makes it easy (and instant) to see how far you’ve come and where you still need to go.

Communication is King

Another one of the keys to success in terms of SaaS development involves creating an environment where constant communication isn’t just a recommendation, but a requirement. That’s why, especially during an era when more people are working remotely than ever, companies regularly rely on communication tools like Slack to bring everyone together again – albeit virtually.

A tool like Slack is a great way to constantly check in with one another via live chat. It can also be used as a file sharing solution as well. If you’re looking for robust video conferencing capabilities, you might also explore options like Microsoft Teams, Cisco WebEx or even the ever-popular Zoom.

Regardless, making sure that team members have access to the tools needed to communicate goes a long way towards improving collaboration as much as possible. This in and of itself can lead to more efficient processes (and a higher quality of work output) before you know it.

Embracing Automation

As is true with most types of software development, there are certain tasks and processes that – while important – can be time-consuming to say the least. There’s where automation via a tool like Quixy will absolutely come in handy.

Quixy (or any other automation solution) can help streamline processes by automating a lot of those manual tasks that eat up a lot of a developer’s time. This in turn allows them to focus more of their attention on the matters that truly need them. Quixy in particular is also a highly customizable solution that includes advanced features like a rich text editor, e-signature capabilities for when it comes time to sign off on a deliverable, facial recognition, and more.

Cloud-Based Code Management

Finally, many SaaS development teams have found success in improving their processes with a tool like Cloud 9. This is a web-based platform that can be used for not only scripting, but also running and debugging code, all via the cloud. This also enables team members to work with Serverless applications, making the transition between local and remote activities as easy as possible. All told, it can be used to create a replica of the entire development environment – thus giving team members more control over what they’re working on and how they’re getting their critical work done every day. 

In the end, these are just a few of the many SaaS development solutions that teams can use to help improve their processes. Having said that, note that it is entirely possible that not all of them will be equally valuable to all teams. You need to carefully consider not only the needs of the project, but the people who are working on it, when making a selection. Don’t select a SaaS development solution and hope it aligns with your requirements. Start with the requirements themselves and work your way backwards to the solution that checks as many of your critical boxes as possible.

BetterCloud has released its 2023 State of SaaSOps report, shedding light on the SaaS industry. The report contains feedback from 743 IT and security professionals, providing valuable insights into the state of affairs.

Some 40% of those polled reported consolidating redundant SaaS apps, accounting for a significant slowdown in adoption. Despite the slower pace, adoption is still up 18% from last year, with organizations using an average of 130 SaaS apps.

Interestingly, despite the importance of SaaS, 59% of those polled reported it was a challenge to manage “SaaS sprawl,” with shadow IT being a prime culprit. Shadow IT refers to instances where departments within an organization deploy their own IT systems without the oversight of the IT department. Demonstrating the extent of the problem, respondents reported that 65% of all SaaS services are deployed without authorization from IT, raising additional security and privacy concerns.

In response to these challenges, IT departments are increasingly bringing SaaS services under their control, with 57% doing so in the last 12 months. Many IT departments are also turning to automation to help manage their SaaS services, with 71% having automated at least one help desk service and 43% having a dedicated SaaSOps automation role or team.

Despite the challenges, BetterCloud is optimistic about the future of the SaaS industry.

“This is our tenth year surveying IT about the SaaS-powered workplace and one thing remains true: SaaS is critical to doing business and to providing a better employee experience,” said David Politis, CEO, BetterCloud, in a statement to WPN. “Yet, in the last few years, the rush to adopt SaaS has outpaced IT’s ability to keep up with management and security challenges. Our research this year highlights these growing pains, but also shows that investments in automation are helping IT stay one step ahead of SaaS application growth.”

BetterCloud’s 2023 State of SaaSOps report is well worth a read and contains additional insights into the industry that every IT professional should know.

Download the report here.