the doctor Gives You A Very Important Reason to Go SaaS
Those of you who read the On-Demand / Software as a Service Application Platforms wiki-paper, already have fifteen (15) great reasons to go SaaS, which include:
- Pay As You Go
- Instant Deployment
- Single Instance
- Economies of Scale
- Provider Handles Administration, Maintenance, and IT Headaches
- Free Upgrades
- The Customer Has the Leverage
- Anywhere Access
- Buy What Is Needed, And Only What Is Needed
- Single, Accountable Entity
- Regular, Automated Data Backup
- Built for Change
- Unparalleled Collaborative Capabilities
- Integration with Office Applications
- Low Total Cost of Ownership
However, perhaps the biggest reason you should go SaaS, is:
- Sustainability
Reading the article Analyzing Costs and Benefits, I was reminded just how fast energy costs are rising (much faster than the referenced rate from the Energy Information Administration) and how much savings there is to be had just by reducing your energy needs.
And if you maintain all of your systems in house, then, unless you are manufacturer, one of your biggest energy needs is your IT data center - especially since you probably can't afford to be updating all of your hardware every other year (like many modern data centers do). If you maintain PC-based servers for 4 (or 5 years), and mini-computers / racks for that long or longer, than your hardware needs are probably three or four times what they would be if everything was running on latest technology with real-time load-balancing and virtualization. Furthermore, chances are each of these machines is requiring at least twice as much energy to run as a modern machine with a lower power utilization processor and much better energy conservation technology. All in all, you're probably consuming at least eight times as much energy as you need to be, especially when compared to an up-to-date data center used by a SaaS provider.
Furthermore, not only are you allowing for significant energy savings by using SaaS, but you're also contributing to green in a big way, because the hardware resources of a SaaS provider are shared between multiple organizations. This not only allows for even more efficient resource utilization, but also reduces the amount of hardware, and thus the amount of future electronic waste, that will need to be recycled.
Dear Doc....having significant experience in SaaS I really think that some items on the list should be qualified so subscribers to an SaaS solution understand the construct and think through requirements accordingly.
As one example, it is important to remember that the single instance inherent to SaaS can conflict with change/customization that is sometimes demanded. Unfortunately, immaturity, the quest for a one more sale or overly aggressive sales tactics sometimes gets in the way of a healthy discussion about change and customization between the vendor and prospect. To buyers of SaaS, if the vendor says "yes" to even those requirements you know to be custom...step back and at least ask the next set of questions about how he intends to do that while maintaining a common instance and focusing on "best practice" functionality.
It is to your benefit to be comfortable with the vendor's approach to managing change, upgrades and custom requirements. Such discussions are a bit tedious, but solid processes and procedures in these disciplines are very important to a solid and sustainable SaaS solution.
There is also generic "integration with office applications" that is likely either not completely true, or perhaps irrelevant depending on the SaaS functionality being purchased.
That said, the majority of the list is true and the benefits of SaaS are tangible. Smart subscribers would be wise to apply the "does this make sense" test when SaaS vendor claims become too lofty.
Bob:
The items on the list are qualified in the referenced wiki-paper and the references contained therein, which, by the way, you are free to contribute to if you feel more explanation and / or detail is required on any point.
Happy reading - and writing.
The Doc.