Fresh off our London Acceleration event last week, in which one our largest partners, British Telecom, took part, I took note that BT announced several new SaaS-related partnerships since we announced our own with them earlier this year.

I mention this because it reminds me of a conversation I recently had with an ex-colleague from CRM magazine. BT is doing a bang-up job of fulfilling a long-held belief of how important telecoms will become in delivering SaaS-based solutions to SMBs in the future.

That said, it’s been nothing short of a struggle until now. Telecos have learned the hard way that bundling and delivering SaaS solutions is a lot different from the turn-key procedures involved with setting up somebody’s telephone or Internet connection. The B2B model of selling business apps is a far cry from the B2C model of selling to the mass consumer, and is far more labor-intensive and interactive. Bundling these applications with the appropriate support services into ready-made solutions will be key.

That said, it seems BT and others have really started to take-off with these concepts via partnerships across a broad array of applications that will allow it to effectively cross-sell to smaller enterprises looking to leverage their relationship with their telecom provider. The opportunities for smaller businesses, and vendors like ourselves, are virtually limitless, especially when you consider that the majority of business in the world today still leverage a homegrown application or nothing at all.