As you can see in my recent blog, I've been delving more deeply into the SaaS (software as a service field) recently, and much of the business has moved to this. That is, using hosted applications for accounts, CRM, helpdesk, etc. rather than having our own servers to run.

However, what struck me was how can SharePoint become a full integrated SaaS platform? There's been lots of talk about how SharePoint can become a SaaS and how this is going to be an area of growth for Microsoft in the coming year with the recent release of SharePoint 2010. But ... the most useful SaaS products integrate with other SaaS products, otherwise you end up with a number of disconnected systems that hinder your business by requiring duplication of information between systems (e.g. contacts).

I've scribbled down a few notes about what would make SharePoint a full integrated with the likes of Harvest, Kashflow, Zendesk, Xero, and alike, and here are my thoughts:

# Simple sign-up process with a SharePoint host
# Ability to use a single sign-on that other SaaS use (OpenID, Google login, etc.)
# A range of web parts that allow data from other providers to be able to be integrated (for example, a web part to display overdue invoices from Kashflow for example).
# Integration with Google Mail (i.e. clicking to email a user loads up Google directly rather than a locally installed mail client).
# Ability to add third party SaaS applications to the search results.

The ability to use a single-sign on such as OpenID or Google login would require a custom forms based authentication mechanism to be built for SharePoint.

The ability to obtain search results from other SaaS would return SharePoint as the central location that pulls all your other SaaS applications into one place. The SharePoint search has always been regarded as a powerful utility in the enterprise when installed locally, and having this capability would return this powerful feature to customers using a hosted solution.

Keep posted - as we're currently speaking to a few providers to provide a SharePoint SaaS platform to our customers.

But most importantly: What functionality and integrations would you like to see with SharePoint as a SaaS?