WebCentral ups SaaS play

WebCentral upped its services offering with the public launch of a new online Software as a Service (SaaS) sales hub.

WebCentral Application Marketplace offers SMEs a range of on demand business applications such as CRM, accounting and tax, business processing and website management.

The site competes against Salesforce.com and Microsoft’s growing suite of on demand business applications.

WebCentral CEO Andrew Spicer said the company had opted for a soft launch of the sales hub to customers and partners in April in an effort to “prove the model” before promoting it to the wider market.

He said Application Marketplace had grown by four applications per month since launching and was currently receiving strong interest in its ASP hosting services. It now hosted about 25 local application provider partners.

Spicer said Application Marketplace would drive WebCentral’s growth through greater use of its managed hosting services, and provide exposure for local developers.

"We hope that by delivering this support and sales mechanism to our SaaS customers, we'll drive demand for their applications and continue to strengthen our relationship as trusted business partners,” he said.