SaaS... yawn...

Being a big boy I unabashedly disclose that every time I hear SaaS I go "why all this noise, what's the big issue?"

It is after all only a "distribution and maintenance method" issue - surely somewhat important, something that must be considered in the whole. But it's not about the software itself, how it works and what value it delivers.

Good thing on a Monday morning though that I stumbled over Vinnie's earlier post here.

I think Vinnie rightfully points to the fact that big companies still may choose the in-house solution due to a need to customise while the small can live with generalised solutions.

The small firms having so many ways to do things differently than their competitors, if their CRM or whatever process is identical to the next competitor it would not matter. And generalised web based stuff is really, really easy to try out and implement so I can see the lure.

But when the SMEs mature and grow they must distance themselves from the others, become better and different even in the small or core processes, and then customising comes in as a must.

Today that seems to require in-house systems and much implementation and maintenance costs.

I would agree with Vinnie that the real value will happen when the fledging SaaS transforms itself into SaaCS - Software as a Customisable Service.

Comments

[DonaldHTaylor]

Sig

Good call. I have been feeling my way around this one for a while, and you've spelt it out for me. SaaCs is when SaaS will really take off.

Donald H Taylor

[vinnie mirchandani]

Sig, thanks...agree with everything you say except I say it with a z instead of an s ...-)

PS - love your process versus practice thoughts

[sig]

Donald, good to hear I'm not alone!

Vinnie, but you're there already :) And yes, my Firefox do pester me on those blasted s vs z and colour and neighbour... I'm just being stubborn!

Took a bit of liberty to make it "customisable" instead of "customised" - thought it would leave more... ehh.. freedom to the user.

[Arnie McKinnis]

Sig - once again, you have taken the simple approach (and I love it). Software and applications are one thing - how you deliver them is another. Big software, small software, complicated or easy, open or closed - supported or unsupported - installed locally or run over a network (regardless of public or private) - all these are just aspects of the software or application.

Great Post - you're spot on!!

[sig]

Thanks Arnie!

Saw that you tagged me to disclose success secrets... hmmm... never thought much about that :) Maybe the answer is that "I will in fact think about it!"

Promise to give it a shot and see if I can find something deep down secret!

[David Terrar]

Hi Sig,
You might expect that I don't agree completely - I can see where you are coming from but it's more than just another software delivery model. For the SaaS provider's who have embraced the technology, the delivery model underpins a different approach which affects every aspect of their business from sales, through development to support. Compared to a traditional software company, they have more of an orientation on the customer, because the SaaS providers have to earn their money every day to keep their user community on board with the "pay as you go" model.

However, there are plenty of companies jumping on the SaaS bandwagon, where all they have done is provided a hosted version of their standard software and an alternate licence model, and that "noise" in the market gets in the way of the SaaS providers who are differentiated. I do agree that SaaCS, or SaCs, as Vinnie called it, is the direction we should be headed, along with much easier integration between web services so we can provide more complete solutions and flexible mashups.

p.s. can you wait a while before you abolish acounting, we've got a product to sell.

[sig]

David,

you brought up a point that I should have included - payment structure!

As you say the concept, the crux for SaaS is the ease of enter and ease of leaving. Distribution is but one part of it, then it's implementation, and lastly contract.

If the contract is "pay as you go" then it does not matter if the system is installed on your own server. Stop paying and do a simple "rm -rf" and it would equal any SaaS in that aspect.

The issue is about the front-end investment here, if big then of course you would be less prone to dump it easily. But that applies to inhouse as well as SaaS.
And the point of the post was more "easy enter" less value for some and over time, "customise" more value for most and certainly over time (but means not-so-easy to enter any more).

Upgrading is no problem for the local application either, almost all applications have automatic checking-download-upgrade built in.

Hehe, don't think I'll be able to abolish accounting - that will take care of itself as long as some very good alternative comes up, and then over time of course ;)