Thursday, August 7, 2008

More About SaaS Myths: Talk About Timing!

On the same day that I posted my article on "The 10 Myths of SaaS", Gene Marks, a BusinessWeek guest columnist, posted his own article titled "Beware the Hype for Software as a Service". Marks is an executive at a systems integrator that sells on-premises software exclusively, so it's apparent he has an axe to grind.

He's getting a lot of flack from other bloggers who write about the SaaS market, including 2 Levels Above.

In my opinion, the article in BusinessWeek doesn't meet any kind of journalistic standards. There are no hard arguments - it's mostly argument by analogy. There are much better arguments both for and against SaaS all over the 'net, and I am dumbfounded that BusinessWeek would bother to post such an article. However, if you continue on and read the comments on the article, I think you'll be educated and amused. I especially like the comment that compares the author to "a girl being stood up on her first prom." :-)

Wednesday, August 6, 2008

The 10 Myths of Software as a Service

I've been working on this material for a white paper we're publishing, and I'm interested in hearing any feedback on the topics below.


The 10 Myths of SaaS

As SaaS has become more widespread, a set of perceptions about SaaS have become accepted as “common knowledge.” The list below presents these assumptions, and provides data for judging their accuracy.


Myth #1: SaaS is only for small companies
Because the SaaS model was pioneered by startups in the software industry, early acceptance was widespread among small and midsize companies. However, according to research published by Saugatuck Research in March of 2007, “Large enterprises are now more likely than small companies to leverage SaaS in their core computing environments, even for business applications considered to be mission-critical.” According to Saugatuck, there are three drivers behind the adoption of SaaS by large enterprises: 1) The establishment and expansion of SaaS aggregation, development and integration platforms (SIPs) by leading vendors; 2) the increase in the number of SaaS environments certified with regard to their integrity based on such auditable standards as SAS-70; 3) increasing verticalization and specialization of SaaS solutions. In addition, 95% of IT executives at companies with 500 employees said they were satisfied with the SaaS programs they are using, up from the already high 84% at companies of all sizes.


Myth #2: The cost-advantage is only in the short-term; long-term, SaaS is more expensive
Total cost of ownership calculations are notoriously complex, with end results varying widely based on small changes to the assumptions used for the calculation. However, SaaS costs usually compare favorably to large organizations providing robust implementations of enterprise software, with regular upgrades and patches. SaaS costs may be less advantageous to a small or mid-size company that skimps on its IT operations.

One area that is often overlooked in comparisons, however, is the time value of money. In essence, SaaS keeps cash in the hands of the customer longer, freeing it to be used for other critical operations. According to Bruce Guptill, managing director at Saugatuck Technology, “SaaS is a means to increase the capabilities of the company at a faster pace and at lower costs…. [companies] want to put money into growing,” rather than infrastructure.


Myth #3: Security is a concern with a SaaS application
According to IDC and Gartner Group, the two biggest threats to IT systems are not hacker attacks, but disgruntled employees and ex-employees with access to internal systems, and a lack of control for critical data.

The top SaaS providers (including my company, Plexus Systems), undergo regular audits to the SAS-70 standard, an auditing standard developed by the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants (AICPA). An accredited SAS-70 audit is widely recognized as a vital benchmark in security measures, because it represents that a service organization has been through an in-depth audit of their controls over information technology and related processes.


Additionally, top SaaS providers typically have advanced biometric controls for access to the system infrastructure, advanced anti-hacking systems to record all attempts to access the system, and a dedicated security team that monitors these systems 24x7. In fact, the security measures employed by mission-critical SaaS providers are usually far more advanced than those used by Fortune 100 companies.


Myth #4: SaaS is only for group or departmental solutions, not for enterprise applications
Early SaaS offerings were generally targeted at small groups or departments within larger organizations, focusing on costly applications that had shown low ROI in the past, such as CRM. However, according to a report issued by Saugatuck Research in July of 2008, “SaaS is expanding well beyond its early low-cost, easy-to-deploy niche application roots to become an important business computing force that is fully integrated with broader enterprise architectures.”


In other words, SaaS has gone from point-solution curiosity to mission-critical applications for enterprises, because the benefits offered by the approach are being matched to enterprise-class applications, such as ERP.


Myth #5: It’s impossible to integrate SaaS applications with my other systems
In direct contrast to the “science projects” required to integrate traditional on-premises applications, many SaaS applications utilize industry standards such as XML to easily swap data and integrate with other systems. For a software application with a well-documented API, integration with a SaaS solution may take a few days – or even a few hours – vs. the weeks and months required for traditional applications.



Myth #6: Using a SaaS application gives me less control over my business and my data
When evaluating a SaaS application, some people fear a loss of control over their data, and in turn their business. In fact, quite the opposite is true.

The contracts and service level agreements utilized in conjunction with SaaS applications almost universally guarantee an organization the right to access and download its data at any time, and SaaS providers almost universally define ownership of data as belonging to their clients. Additionally, SaaS providers like Plexus Systems provide a flexibility in accessing, displaying and analyzing data that is difficult to replicate with legacy on-premise systems.

This combination of guaranteed ownership rights, flexibility of usage, and anytime/anywhere access give users MORE control over their data and businesses, not less.


Myth #7: Multi-tenant/single-tenant/virtual technology is not important
A multi-tenant architecture, combined with an agile development methodology, is the only SaaS solution that delivers long-term advantages beyond cost and resource use. Because a multi-tenant architecture removes the requirement of testing all software updates against multiple hardware/OS configurations, development of new features is greatly accelerated. This allows the SaaS provider to roll out new features upon request, rather than waiting until they can be bundled in the next software “upgrade”. In fact, with the multi-tenant model, there are no “upgrades” required; a single software installation is used by all users, and new features are automatically incorporated into this installation as they are delivered by the development team, rather than being relegated to a one-off “customization” that may not carry forward to the next major update.

The single tenant or hosted model may be advantageous for a company with limited IT resources, but hosting does not offer any of the long-term advantages of a multi-tenant SaaS solution. Because three parties are involved (customer, software vendor, hosting company) the costs may even be higher than running a system internally. Moreover, because each hosted application is an island unto itself, the model suffers the same challenges surrounding upgrades and customizations as the on-premises model.

Myth #8: I can wait for my current software company to offer a SaaS solution
Major software providers have no incentive to launch a SaaS solution until they are forced to by market competition. In fact, many market forces are pushing these companies to NOT develop a SaaS solution: their sales channel is not optimized for SaaS, their financial model is dependent on large sales of perpetual software licenses, and if they are publicly traded, they may be punished by investors for changing their current business model.


When one of these legacy software vendors does finally make the decision to move to SaaS, it can take them two years or more to launch the first version of their SaaS solution – sometimes much longer. Moreover, for a traditional software company to transform itself from a product development company into a service organization is a major undertaking: think about the quality of service most customers receive from their current software vendors, and you’ll get an idea of the challenges facing these companies as they seek to transform themselves.

In summary, companies who choose to wait for their current software vendors to develop a SaaS offering have a long wait in front of them, and will be missing out on the financial and operational benefits that a SaaS solution provides.


Myth #9: SaaS reduces the authority and value of our IT department
To paraphrase Rodney Dangerfield, most IT departments “don’t get no respect.” The complexities of running sophisticated enterprise systems are lost on non-technical personnel, and so IT organizations suffer from the dreaded “C/F” syndrome. That is, when things are running well, their users grade them with an average “C” – after all, the systems are supposed to be running smoothly, right? And when things go wrong, the IT organization immediately gets graded an “F”, whether it’s their fault or not.

It’s no wonder that some IT professionals are defensive when it comes to anything that may infringe on their responsibilities. However, the IT professionals who have embraced the SaaS revolution are finding something surprising: SaaS empowers IT organizations in a way that traditional on-premises applications do not.

For IT professionals, installing and maintaining applications and systems are laborious, but relatively low value, responsibilities. When these responsibilities are removed by the use of a SaaS solution, IT professionals can find themselves freed to focus on adding value as business process professionals; that is, SaaS removes the humdrum portion of the IT department’s responsibilities, and focuses the team on adding value by focusing on business processes and operations, rather than maintaining hardware and installing patches.

For IT organizations that embrace this new role, the prestige and authority of the department can be much higher than with their previous role.


Myth #10: SaaS might be a good interim strategy as I go through some major changes, but it’s not a long-term solution
Over the past few years, many companies undergoing a major business change (e.g., merger, acquisition, spinoff, etc.) have evaluated a SaaS solution as an interim option, until their new operational parameters are well-defined and they have the capabilities and budget available to do a large on-premises deployment. However, most of them have changed their minds after using the SaaS solution for a period of time, and have indefinitely tabled the long-term on-premises project.

This shouldn’t be surprising. According to research published by Saugatuck Research in July of 2008, customer satisfaction with SaaS applications far exceeds that of traditional enterprise software – a whopping 95% of customers are happy with their SaaS solution, while some other studies have measured satisfaction among on-premise software users at approximately half that. In fact, some studies have shown that traditional on-premises deployments of enterprise solutions such as CRM and ERP are considered failures a majority of the time. This is not true with SaaS solutions, where the renewal rate for enterprise SaaS providers remains above 90%.

The lesson: SaaS is a long-term solution that delivers superior customer satisfaction.



Friday, March 14, 2008

Winning Against the Big Guys (Or Why Microsoft Doesn't Get On-Demand)

A colleague brought an article to my attention this morning, wherein a Microsoft product manager and a director at Avanade (a joint venture between Accenture and Microsoft that provides IT services based on Microsoft technology) discuss why Microsoft isn'g going full-tilt into the on-demand model for ERP. It's very interesting in what it reveals about the mind-set within Microsoft about the on-demand model.

First, the article's author and the people quoted continually confuse the "on-demand" or "software as a service" model with the "hosted" model. To reiterate an earlier post, let me clarify these definitions:

Hosted applications: this simply means someone else is managing the application on a computer that is remote from the user. Hosted makes no promises about the applications being delivered in a multi-tenant mode, nor about the delivery method - even client/server solutions can be hosted, given enough bandwidth. (This is a new spin on an older outsourcing model made popular by EDS and other providers.) Hosting ADDS complexity to the buyer-vendor relationship by introducing a third company, the hosting provider - and thus adds cost. It does nothing to address the issues of upgrades, new feature rollouts, maintenance, etc., except to transfer the requirements to the third party hosting company, who charges for all of these services.

Software as a service (or on demand) applications: the idea of delivering software as a network-based service has evolved into web-native applications with an invisible back-end - the users know nothing about the infrastructure, there is no requirement to buy or lease hardware, and in the best cases, there isn't even a client application that needs to be installed. Application developers forego the traditional waterfall development methodology (V 1.0, 1.1, 1.2, 2.0, 2.5, etc.) in favor of agile development methodologies, which create versionless software. Think about Google: when did they last change the software? When did they last do a backup? What kind of software do you need to install on your PC to use Google?

The advantages of SaaS or on demand are ENORMOUS when compared to both the on premises software model, and to the hosted model. It's not just about cost, though there are terrific cost benefits to SaaS applications; it's about agility and flexibility in getting and using new features, and about the software getting better each and every day.

There are two quotes that surprised me in the article. The first:

Brad Wilson, general manager for Microsoft Dynamics CRM, said, "Companies have shown themselves willing to take marketing, sales and service online, less so supply chain, less so financials." Tell that to NetSuite, Intuit (with Quicken Online and Turbotax Online), and supply chain companies like Procuri, Ketera, E2Open, and many others that are showing phenomenal growth. Even SAP is getting into the on-demand ERP market with Business ByDesign.

The second surprising quote is: Michael Merfeld, Avanade's director of customer systems for Microsoft Dynamics, said, "There is a segment of the market out there that views ERP as a necessary evil. They want to buy it like a utility. They don't conceive of it as a strategic weapon. Those customers are very contrary to the whole Dynamics message."

Frankly, that is self-serving BS of the first degree. Companies don't look at the software as a necessary evil; they look at the old software model as an UNnecessary evil! When comparing a package like Dynamics, with a license cost of $1 million and an implementation project of >$2 million, to a package like Plexus Online, with NO upfront license costs and a smaller and faster implementation project, which would you choose? However, the cost argument just gets some attention, and it doesn't sway many companies; it's when they realize that they don't have to plan for a major upgrade before the implementation project is even over (commonplace with large on-premises systems) and don't have to worry about applying maintenance patches, doing nightly backups, etc., that you see a fog lifting from around them. Additionally, if they find a feature that is missing from a legacy package like Dynamics, they have to figure out a work-around for the next 1-2 years until the feature is added (IF it's ever added); with on-demand systems like Plexus Online, we can literally deliver the feature in a few days or a few weeks, often before they even make the decision to sign a contract. That simply blows companies away.

To his credit, Merfeld acknowledges that they're losing deals to Plexus on a regular basis. It's his dismissive attitude about WHY they are losing deals that is somewhat amusing, and somewhat frustrating. He clearly doesn't understand the advantages of the on-demand model that has emerged in the industry, and that's not that unusual. We SaaS evangelists have an enormous educational task in front of us - but the SaaS snowball has been rolling downhill for some time now, and it's gathering speed, mass and momentum.

Final note: it's ironic (and indicative of the challenge in front of Microsoft) that Plexus Online is built entirely on top of Microsoft technologies, including SQL Server and .Net.