Popular examples of vendors providing public cloud services always include the likes of Salesforce, Amazon, Google and Microsoft. But there are also many Dutch companies that are selling public cloud services successfully today. This research document provides a first look at who’s who in the Dutch SaaS, PaaS and IaaS world.

The (partial) list that we established consists of approximately 140 companies. Software-as-as-service players (SaaS) are most common in the Netherlands, with 77% of all entries in this category. Within Platform-as-a-service (PaaS) we managed to find only 4 companies or 3% of all entries. Within Infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) we identified about 30 companies equalling 20% of all entries. The slide below provides a logo snapshot of who’s who in the Dutch Public Cloudscape today. Click on the image to enlarge. For future updates check here.

SaaS

We segmented the SaaS players into 6 groups: Finance/ERP, Communications, Online Workspace & Collaboration, CRM, HRM and Other. This is not an arbitrary segmentation but based on the specialisation of Dutch cloud companies we were able to identify online. Communications is the largest Group with 21 companies or 19% of SaaS entries. Online Workspace & Collaboration includes 20 (19%) and Financial/ERP includes 17 (16%). HRM has 9 (8%) players and CRM 8 (7%) players. The “Other” group encompasses 33 companies (31%) with a variety of specialisations ranging from ecommerce, marketing and video surveillance to business intelligence, document management and web building. Below we briefly discuss the 6 segments and the more interesting – as we see it – players.

Communications

Every man and his dog can start a hosted voice company these days as the barrier to entry is quite low. The communications segment is therefore dominated by many cloud VoIP and hosted voice players and this is only a partial list at best. With communications commoditising, it is interesting to see what value add beyond convenience and price these companies are offering. The more forward looking are positioning to include unified communications and collaboration (UCC) and fixed-mobile convergence (FMC). We expect that soon other cloud services such as Online Workspace are about to be added to a bundled and converged cloud, UCC, FMC offering. In fact, communications,  online workspace and infrastructure players could merge into broader infrastructure cloud services vendors.

Some of the more interesting players include Covide, who is integrating CRM and VoIP, and Voiceworks who is distributing a no-hassle white label FMC product. Below is the list of companies and links to their respective websites.

Dutch SaaS Communications Players

Online Workspace & Collaboration

This is the second largest SaaS segment in terms of number of Dutch companies and includes online workspace, virtual desktop and collaboration tools. There is plenty of activity in the online workspace segment. The more interesting examples, however, are the likes of Workvoices, Snapper and New Day at Work because they focus more on the collaboration experience and the social enterprise.

Dutch SaaS Online Workspace & Collaboration Players

Financial/ERP

The financial segment is an area where Dutch SaaS companies excel, with several players also active internationally.  Twinfield, for instance, part of the Wolters Kluwer Tax and Accounting division, is available in 22 countries. Exact is a market leader in The Netherlands and expanding its position in the UK, Germany, France and the US. UNIT4, with its FinancialForce.com subsidiary is making inroads in the UK and US market. In the ERP market, Newbase and Tblox are up-and-coming SaaS players.

Dutch SaaS Financial/ERP players

CRM

With only 7% of SaaS entries, the Dutch CRM segment is small compared to Communications, Financial and Online Workspace. The Selfservice Company has a unique approach through its virtual selfservice and customer support solutions. Exact online is branching out from financial to include CRM. PerfectView is one of the leading Dutch SaaS CRM players and is also branching out into the UK and Germany.

Dutch SaaS CRM Players

HRM

HRM is also one of the smaller Dutch SaaS segment with only 8% of SaaS entries. Raet is the market leader here. They recently launched Youforce in the UK. Another interesting company is eMerus with its HR2day HRM SaaS solution. We expect other players, such as Exact, to also enter the SaaS HRM market.

Dutch SaaS HRM Players

Other

There is a wide variety of SaaS vendors that cannot be categorized in the above segments. These are included in the “other” segment. One category that has the potential to grow is Document and Content Management with 6 players already:  BCT, Contenzo, Decos, O3 Spaces, Hippo, and OfficeDrive. Also in this segment are vertical SaaS solutions such as Corporatie Cloud for housing associations and Schoolmaster for the education market.

Other Dutch SaaS Players

PaaS

The number of Dutch PaaS players is quite small, but contains innovative companies. Cordys is building a BPM PaaS platform for application development and business process management. SaaSplaza is building a platform for Microsoft Dynamics ISVs, helping ISVs to move from on-premise to SaaS solutions. Mendix is building a mobile app development platform, helping enterprises to build and manage new business apps across a variety of OS and devices. Servoy is building a business application platform for ISVs to deliver their solutions across any mobile or portable device.

Dutch PaaS Players

IaaS

In the IaaS segment we identified 29 players, providing compute, backup, storage and other infrastructure services. There are some large infrastructure companies in the Netherland such as InterXion and Ocom that have a European presence. Also noteworthy is GREENCLOUDS that offers cloud capacity aggregation.

Dutch IaaS Players

Bottom Line

The Dutch public cloud market is vibrant and happening. We expect the number of companies active in this space to grow quickly as more customers take the plunge and move from on-premise to XaaS solutions. Dutch companies are strong in Finance, Communication, Collaboration and Infrastructure clouds. Some of the trends for 2013 and beyond include:

• Expect to see mergers between Communications, Online Workspace, Collaboration and Infrastructure players. Just like telecom operators use a multi-play strategy to entice and lock-in consumers with lower costs and bundled offerings, the same tactics will be deployed by business service providers combining cloud, unified communications and collaboration (UCC), and FMC aspects into single converged services.
• We expect to see more vertical cloud solutions appear as branch organisations recognize the value of cloud cooperation and vertical ISVs recognize the potential of bringing their solutions to the cloud.
• Foreign as well as Dutch XaaS players will acquire Dutch companies to get a foothold in the Netherlands and to add competencies and customers to their portfolios.
• Expect Dutch XaaS players to expand internationally after they achieved success at home
• HRM and CRM are up and coming SaaS specialisations. We expect existing (financial) SaaS players to add HRM and CRM to their portfolios, on-premise vendors to start SaaS solutions, and new Dutch and cloud-born HRM and CRM contenders to emerge.

Methodology

We use the NIST definition for cloud which can be downloaded here. Public cloud is only one of the many types of cloud, check out how the METISfiles positions public cloud against seven other computing styles.

The (partial) company list is based on desk research. Only companies with an HQ in the Netherlands are eligible for the list. Only companies that sell enterprise public cloud services are included, although there is likely to be a certain amount of “cloudwashing” within the examples we provide.

We welcome your feedback on the list and on any Dutch public cloud players that we have omitted.