San Diego, CA, 2009/05/01 --

Miva Merchant announced today the successful completion of its conversion to a distributed Software as a Service (SaaS) model for its online storefront product. The new recurring revenue model represents the culmination of 20 months of improvements made by the company's owner-managers since the firm was purchased in August of 2007.

The first change made immediately after the purchase was to transfer technical support in-house, dramatically improving the customer experience with a support team based at Miva Merchant's San Diego offices. Then, in May of 2008, the powerful Miva Merc hant 5.5 was released at no charge to Miva Merchants, touching many phases of online store management.

The new distributed SaaS model will provide numerous benefits to Miva Merchant store owners, including updates to be streamed out at no cost or disruption, and continuous feature upgrades to Miva Merchant 5.5 without additional fees. A small software fee will be charged to web hosting companies, who will in many cases pass all or most of this fee on to the merchants whose stores they host. For more details regarding the impact on Miva Merchant store owners, see today's interview at http://www.practicalecommerce.com/articles/1082-Interview-Miva-Merchant-CEO-EVP-on-Moving-to-a-SAAS-Business-Model

Russ Carroll, CEO of Miva Merchant, stated, "For over a year and a half since our purchase of Miva Merchant, all of our efforts and resources have been focused on honing essential facets of the Miva Merchant online e-commerce platform.  With the transition to a  distributed SaaS model, the final, key piece falls into place, acknowledging that we are not in the business of merely selling software licenses, but that our core business is to provide complete, ongoing e-commerce solutions and support for Miva Merchant online stores. One of the many benefits to Miva Merchants will be receiving continual upgrades to the software, seamlessly and at no additional cost. It's almost like getting a new car for free every time a new model comes out!"

Miva Merchant is an acknowledged industry leader in complete e-commerce solutions, with approximately 50,000 active online merchants currently using Miva Merchant's powerful and highly expandable shopping cart software, as well as design services and San-Diego based full-service support.