2011 – A year of tremendous expansion in how we serve our Software and SaaS customers

When I end a year, I like to take a moment to step back and appreciate what we accomplished.  2011 has been an incredibly exciting year for Avangate.

We launched our new SkyCommerce Suite, expanded our overall service with close to 1.000 new features and enhancements, delivered new marketing and optimization services, and extended our global presence with new team members and offices, including our new North American headquarters in Redwood Shores, California.  All of this with the aim of helping our customers sell more software through any channel and any model.

It is not too surprising that the software market continues to grow as software plays an increasingly important role in our world (see Andresseen’s view on how “Software is Eating the World“).  More interestingly is the massive shift in how software is being distributed and sold.   The market size of ESD and SaaS will grow from $45Bln to over $120Bln by 2014.  The 3TS Cisco Growth Fund recognized this opportunity with a $6 million investment in Avangate in March of this year, accelerating our growth and strengthening our global presence.

We’ve been honored to serve this market – we participated in, sponsored or organized over fourteen events this year to network, share ideas, and help our customers grow their businesses.  We now have over 2,000 clients, from some of the largest vendors of consumer software titles, such as Bitdefender and Kaspersky, to SaaS vendors including Terapeak and TeamLab.

In addition, our affiliate network has grown to over 27,000 software members – Majorgeeks, Siliconaction.com.br and TopTenServices.net are three power affiliates that joined in 2011.  I’m incredibly proud of the Avangate team for continuing to deliver a mature platform with the scale and flexibility to serve shareware, mid-market, and enterprise software and SaaS companies.  What’s more, we are honored to be recognized in Forrester’s recent report on Solutions For Digital Commerce.

2012 – Prediction, Cloudy with a Chance of Significant Growth

The cloud is not a new concept, but we see this trend accelerating to dominate future initiatives (8 out of 10 new software start-ups are SaaS). The software market will only continue to be driven and disrupted by the rise of the cloud.

What does this boil down to? I particularly liked a blog post by Louis Columbus talking about “stripping away the hype by asking how these technologies [analytics, big data and cloud computing] contribute to excellent customer experiences and greater customer engagement.  Those are the real catalysts of market growth and the greatest disruptive forces at work in enterprise software today.”

While there are many predictions for 2012 (many articles are mentioning growth for next year which is good news – here’s one example about the antivirus sub-vertical; and also check out this Boxing Day treat by Ray Wang), let us spotlight one that is specifically apt for software companies: the transition from systems of transaction to systems of engagements and experience.

Software: engagement across the lifecycle

We feel this is important and has many implications for a software company. As many ISVs transition from perpetual to pay-as-you-go models such as freemium, rental, or subscription, they need to also experiment with new partners and affiliates and manage sales worldwide through any channel, online and offline.  The challenge is to do this while providing a flexible and frictionless customer experience across the software lifecycle. We have focused on this in 2011 with our integrated SkyCommerce solution and are continuing this focus into 2012.

Software companies need to have the platform to effectively engage and create the right experiences for their customers and need to be able to do it in a way that complements, and not alienates, the resellers which still make up over 50% of software sales today.

Likewise, software resellers and distributors need to be able to take advantage of these industry shifts, continue to increasingly migrate their businesses online and focus on emerging trends, such as aggregating cloud services.

Meet with us

Stay tuned for new and exciting things we’ve planned for 2012. To start with, meet the team at the first industry event we’re attending next year: Affiliate Summit West, January 8-10, Las Vegas, USA.

Happy 2012 and best wishes from all of us here at Avangate!

P.S. Your point of view for 2012?

We would love to hear what you think are some of the key trends that will drive your sales in 2012. We will continue to build upon these issues into the New Year on this blog and look forward to continuing the conversation!

The software market today is driven by the rise of cloud computing, forcing independent software vendors (ISVs) to fight commoditization-driven margin pressure, expand to new channels and markets, and move to “frictionless” self-service transactions. These new delivery models have irrevocably altered how software is developed, distributed and consumed…

… that was the heavy “marketing” intro. Now to the real world!

Actually, the truth is that the software world has changed and continues to change at a rapid pace. So let’s not just talk about it, let’s get together, learn how to understand the market challenges from the best in the industry and from each other, adapt these to our own reality, and do better.

So Avangate is inviting you to join us for a series of events during November and December – pick the location closest to you:  US, UK or China:
•    San Francisco: Thursday, November 10th, 2011, Zibibbo Restaurant
•    New York: Friday, November 18th, 2011, Crown Royalton Hotel
•    Beijing: Saturday, November 19th, 2011, Beijing Huang Yuan Hotel Ballroom
•    London: Thursday, December 8th, 2011, the Hospital Club

We’ve invited great speakers: Brian K. Walker, Vice President & Principal Analyst, Forrester Research, Inc., R “Ray” Wang, Principal Analyst and CEO, Constellation Research Group, Geno Prussakov, Affiliate Marketing Expert, AM Navigator LLC – check the links above to learn who is speaking at each location.

We’ll bring to the table not only great food, but also tips and guidance (and more!) on how to sell software and SaaS solutions in a world of many channels and many models.

Next step: register here. You’ll hear back from us – a friendly warning that places are limited and filling up fast!

Looking forward to meeting you there!

5 years of successful online sales through affiliates worldwide. It’s rather vague, but I’ll let the figures on the right speak for us. We’re in the celebration mood here at Avangate, remembering how it all started and looking at where we are today. And it looks pretty nice :)

Why is the Avangate Affiliate Network so special?

We believe that we have an extensive knowledge of the online software vertical and its sales channels. We started doing this in 1992, so you might say we’re more than 5 years old if talking about our experience.
The most important thing is we bring together strong software specialized affiliates (download portals, niche sites, coupon websites, personal sites) and award-winning software titles from top merchants worldwide. It’s like mixing all the good things – nothing can go wrong :)

Celebrate with us

We prepared some exciting contests for the Avangate affiliates in order to share the joy of being 5 years old. Creativity and sales skills will be rewarded in this series of contest, which can bring you up to $450 in cash, gift cards plus the opportunity of receiving a special commission from 5 of our best converting advertisers: BitDefender, VSO Software, DVDFab, IObit and Movavi.

We’ve come a long way to where we are today with our affiliate network: many of platform developments, support, feedback and of course, millions of affiliate referred customers. And there will be more to come, since we aim to grow at least in the same pace in which we did so far.

Not using the Avangate Affiliate Network already?

Become an affiliate today and start monetizing a great online sales channel.

Drop us a line at info@avangate.com to see how you can increase your online sales using our software affiliate network – we’ve got some great opportunities for you. ;)

I hope your office/home/coffee place is also filled with a pleasant pine and freshly peeled oranges scent and you feel the slowing rhythm of everybody and everything around you.
We are also enjoying this time of the year and are spending most of our time on summing up and drawing conclusions for 2010 and deciding on our future actions for 2011. Of course, I want to share with you here some of the milestones of Avangate in 2010 :).

In case you missed it: Avangate just turned 5 – Happy Birthday, Avangate! :)

With this in mind and with a strong desire to unwind, we left the office and went for 3 days to the quiet town of Săcele, in the heart of Romania, close to the mountains.

Apart from enjoying the glorious scenery, we did a lot of fun activities to help us bond and discover new ways to put into practice the company values.

We also discovered the artist within. For 4 full hours we went back school, this time to to the art and craft classes. A very special moment. We basically  painted a huge picture split in several pieces. Imagine a large room full of people working frantically, ingeniously mixing colors, and making sure they are consistent across the board (difficult task!), and let’s not forget also the personal touch. The outcome was spectacular as you can see below:

Like every beginning of November since 2006, you have the chance to meet us at the ESWC (European Software conference). This time, on the 6th and 7th of Nov (this weekend!), in wonderful Vienna.

Avangate is the Premiere Sponsor as we have been every year and we are proud to take part in the event, meet so many people passionate about software and exchange ideas.
As we did at ISDEF, we want to celebrate (again) our 5th anniversary. So prepare for toasting because on Saturday evening at the Epsilon Awards Ceremony the drinks are on us. ;)