Have been thinking about the SaaS model a lot and also came across this post on the notion of that is enabled by SaaS applications, two thoughts that occurred to me on similar lines are:

1.Ad supported SaaS Application - Adsense for the Enterprise

2. Economies of Scale via SaaS

Adsense for the Enterprise - SaaSed

The purchasing department is raising a PR for a particular product "X", than ads are show like Google Adsense, which will list out the possible vendors and highlights the rates they are offering and delivery time and if the operator find that more attractive than his regular buyer he can go with that. This sort of advertising will have a lot of value to all parties involved.

SaaS based Economies of Scale:

10 customers of salesforce.com join together and group up/ bulk their requirement together and than work out a deal with the vendor / supplier to get the best deals/rates.

One company has excess stock of a component X he makes it available to all the other companies on that application (on + demand ) and lets the others leverage or benefit from it.

Do these sound like a googled pipe dreams or can they become reality. What do you think?

Prashanth Rai