SaaS is turning computing into a utility like the electric grid did for industry.

SaaS is a significant growth driver but fuzzy informations spread over the web make it difficult to understand and differenciate from software hosting environments.

This blog focuses on key success factors driving the development of a successful Business-As-A-Service solution.

Saturday, September 26, 2009

SaaS offering will eventually satisfy SaaS demand

SaaS is about simplifying its everyday's life. To achieve this goal a company needs to have a coherent governance strategy. Which means that once you have tried - often by starting with a SaaS based emailing solution - and perceived the benefits - no hardware nor onsite maintenance services issues, higher level of services quality, ubiquity, no inhouse upgrading issues etc. - you want more solutions to be available.

If you use a mix of onsite servers and offsite SaaS solutions you still face integration issues, you still have to pay for the cost of onsite hardware and software which hides most of the benefits of Opex SaaS. Some companies would then think - they often mistake themselves - than SaaS is not the right answer to their daily problems. Other companies follow the right path wich lands to "SaaS is great, the optimum benefits will occur when all the professional solutions my company needs are available as SaaS solutions".

Of course those latter orientations are still fewer than the others, mainly because even if SaaS is becoming more familiar it is still mostly unknown to most of the small companies. They simply do not know that these solutions and benefits exist.

But most of those who tried want more solutions to be available. When they catalog the solutions they use, and search for SaaS based equivalents they do not find a matching offer. Why ?

Because most of the solution providers face a common dilemna: they think that the only choice they have is either keep on developing their software solutions as they always did OR develop a SaaS oriented solution. They face the issue which sticks every market: change management! They have to think in a different way than they always did, their teams have to do so, their resellers channels have to do so, and they conclude that their consumers would not be ready to do so - which is false.

The solution providers should face the reality: they can keep developing their existing software solutions AND start a SaaS stragegy development.

When enough SaaS based professional solutions are available the market will shift. This is a kind of chaos theory behaviour. There is a turn point - which is close to be a reality - when offering will be equal to the minimum needs of companies. There will then be much more companies who will use 90% to 100% SaaS based solutions. These companies will get the optimum benefits out of SaaS. They will let others know about it because they will be able to save more money, they will be much more adaptative to environment changements, and they will be much more efficient than their competitors.

Solutions editors who still ask themselves about a go/nogo issue will then start working on SaaS bases solutions in parallel with their existing portfolio. Offering will be greater than the initial demand and the growth of the SaaS market will be exponential. This will be the sparkling that will light the business market and will eventually change the way we use computers and software solutions. As more solutions are available their integration will be easier. A mass market is based on common criteria - standardization of integration protocols. Companies will benefit from business solutions without having to endorse all the pains of being at the same time the consumer and the plumber. They will pick up the solutions they need, which will integrate and adapt to their needs.

Computing is about to becoming a utility.

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