Often it pays to let the "cutting-edgers" bleed to learn what they have done right and wrong, so that you can come up with a more robust, feature-rich solution that will push them, along with the offerings from traditionalist vendors, out of the way.

That appears to be Consona’s strategy with CRM software. After watching its competition go through the trials and tribulations of hosted CRM, which it calls "first generation SaaS (solution as a service)," it plans to launch its own SaaS CRM offering, the Consona (News - Alert) Cloud, in early 2010.

The Consona Cloud, heralding the next generation solutions, promises to be different than first generation tools. They will be more secure and reliable than first generation SaaS (News - Alert) offerings and, often, “substantially more secure and reliable than the most well-intentioned internal IT deployments,” says the firm.

Instead of creating new hosted platforms from scratch, Consona will use one of the most proven and rugged hosting applications available: Amazon’s Web Services cloud computing infrastructure built on what Gartner (News - Alert) refers to as a Server/OS virtualization platform. The Consona Cloud is expected, says its maker, to overcome significant reliability and security issues that are present in many first gen solutions. Many companies, it points out, “don’t want to subject their most precious asset—their customer data—to potential security breaches and shut down their production operations up to 20 times a year.”

The Consona Cloud will enable a private, more flexible, customizable, highly extensible, single-tenant application infrastructure: while remaining multi-tenant at the operating-system-and-lower level. “In other words, now you can rent a house, share it with no one, and knock out that wall that’s been bothering you,” says Consona.

In contrast, the apartment building-like application architecture offered by first gen SaaS vendors is limiting. When you rent, you share features with your neighbors, like your yard and utilities. Many companies are not willing to share the foundational aspects like a database with their competitors, and they are concerned about the fact that it is impossible to replicate their implementation in-house should their business conditions change.

And while first generation SaaS solutions do offer a high level of configurability, they cannot be deeply customized at the code level. Bottom line, “everyone’s using the same application, and there is limited flexibility. You can’t knock out your apartment wall because your neighbor is using it, too.”

The Consona Cloud promises other advantages over first gen hosted CRM solutions. Unlike generally other SaaS offerings that charge on a per user/month subscription basis, the Consona Cloud will offer one cost model based on the resources you consume. To put it another way, you can pay for your software much like you pay for your electric bill. You only pay for what you use: which can even further reduce your monthly expense beyond the SaaS model.

Also unlike other SaaS offerings, the Consona Cloud will give you flexibility to alternative deployment options e.g. to Consona’s traditional on-premises offering should your needs change. There are many reasons companies might still choose this model, whether it be based on high-performance, system-to-system integration, or simply data security or compliance objectives.

In addition to eliminating the security, reliability and customization issues associated with first-gen SaaS, the Consona Cloud also retains all the benefits—namely, reducing large infrastructure, hardware, personnel and bandwidth investments. Now you can set up the infrastructure you need for our deeply integrated and knowledge-rich service and support software solution for less money per hour that you would pay for a babysitter.

“Our customers are using our applications to support extremely complex products and services, and they cannot afford to subject their most precious asset—customer data—to the security, reliability and scalability issues that accompany a first generation SaaS deployment,” says Tim Hines, vice president of product management for Consona’s CRM products. “It simply hasn’t been an option, even when stacked against the benefits of significantly reducing hardware and infrastructure related costs. The Consona Cloud eliminates these issues, while giving our customers flexibility to alternative deployment and pricing options, should their business conditions change.”