A Blog About Software As A Service
This blog is all about software as a service (SaaS) for business. If it is in the cloud, you will find it here.
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SaaS and IT Management with Divakar Jandhyala of eVapt
Posted on April 28th, 2009 No commentsJust found this video of Divakar Jandhyala of eVapt, on PodTech, in which Jandhyala talks about the other side of SaaS for IT Management: IT Management of SaaS. He talks about how IT departments are dealing with the adoption of SaaS solutions and what the IT department of the future will look like. Interesting stuff.
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SaaS For IT Management
Posted on April 28th, 2009 1 commentEver since I joined Aprigo in March of 2009 (ahem, last month), I’ve been developing our inbound marketing plan. With that, I’ve been doing a lot of keyword and topic research, and have been amazed at the amount of attention being paid to software as a service (SaaS) for IT management. Let me explain.
First, a little background on me.
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After graduating college, I went to work full-time as the marketing guy/webmaster/web developer at a high tech law firm in Boston. Though I was part of their IT department, I was really somewhat detached from the other IT folks. I was the web guy, so I really wasn’t part of ops. But it was an excellent experience, getting to work on the marketing side, the development side, and getting to understand the IT side all at the same time. I started a blog called lawfirmblogging.com, and really started to get into the social media and web marketing racket. The blog started to get a lot of attention, and I realized that’s what I really wanted to get into.
After 7 years, I was itching to join a startup. I joined matchmine in April of 2007 as their Web Community Evangelist. I’d moved to the B-to-C side of things and was working on promoting a company that was offering something for free. Again, awesome, awesome experience, and I learned a lot about building a user base, user acquisition, and inbound marketing. The company shut down in October of 2008.
After matchmine, I consulted for a few months until I joined Aprigo. So I’ve gone from a law firm to a B-to-C startup to a B-to-B SaaS company focused on IT Management. There. That’s my story in a nutshell. Onto the point.
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Now that the mini-bio is out of the way, let’s get to the meat of this thing. The idea that SaaS tools focused on IT Management are all the rage. Now, don’t just take my word for it, let’s look at what the experts are saying:
In this article, Andrew Conry-Murray talks about the move toward SaaS-ifying (just made that sucker up) IT managment. From the piece:A subset of IT management startups are taking the SaaS or hybrid-SaaS route, which promises simpler deployment than traditional premises software. Companies such as Paglo, which is aimed at small businesses, and Service-now.com, which targets Global 2000 customers, use the SaaS model to provide a variety of IT management services.
A new report from Forrester forecasts the future of this market. (You can read a summary here.) At present, it says SaaS-based IT management accounts for a measly 1% of IT management software. But by 2013, the report anticipates SaaS vendors will have a modest 10% of the market.
While those numbers probably don’t have the Big Four (BMC (NYSE: BMC), IBM (NYSE: IBM) Tivoli,HP (NYSE: HPQ), and CA (NSDQ: CA)) trembling, another figure might: Forrester predicts that enterprises with 1,000 or more employees will account for 50% of SaaS installations in 2009.
These are really interesting figures to me, as the SaaS model makes a lot of sense for the mid-market to small(er) size IT departments…as much as the Global 2000 companies.Here’s an excerpt from the Forrester article cited in the InformationWeek story:How Big Is SaaS In IT Management Software?
by Peter O’Neill
with Stefan Ried, Ph.D., Reedwan IqbalSoftware-as-a-service (SaaS) is disrupting the IT management software market. Incumbent software vendors are setting up new business units and adding SaaS offerings to existing portfolios; managed service providers are repositioning their offerings to leverage the trend; and new pure-play SaaS operators are extending their success by taking advantage of product churn in various established vendors’ service and asset management customer bases. Forrester has developed a market forecast model for IT management SaaS that shows that SaaS will grow from making up just over 1% of the $18 billion IT management software market in 2008 to 10% by 2013, by which time many of the brand SaaS providers could be well established.Like I said, it’s just an excerpt. If you want to read the whole article, it’ll cost you $749.I may be biased, but the SaaS model just makes sense. If you’re at a gigantic company with the resources (both in personnel and finance) to constantly install, monitor and patch hardware and software that is supposed to manage your data (think about that for a second), then a SaaS solution might not make much sense to you. But if you’re at a company that is constantly putting out fires, has a small IT group managing a LOT of data, and don’t have the time or money to support new IT Management software, then I’d imagine the subscription-based SaaS model sounds pretty attractive.But again, I’m biased.
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The Argument Against Software As A Service: Sitepoint Article
Posted on April 3rd, 2009 No commentsThere’s an interesting article on Sitepoint.com called “The Argument Against Software As A Service“. Though the article mainly talks about the risk of using free SaaS solutions for business critical applications, they also touch on the fear that keeping all records in Salesforce.com is risky, as Salesforce.com could go under at any minute. Though I don’t really believe that, the article does underscore the fact that you should really explore the migration and export options of any SaaS before handing over business critical data.
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Beware The Hype for Software As A Service- Business Week Article
Posted on April 3rd, 2009 No commentsAs I’m just getting started with this blog, I’ve been doing some research into the coverage of software as a service in the majors, and found this article in Business Week from July of 2008. It’s called “Beware The Hype for Software As A Service” and it is by Gene Marks. In the piece, Marks immediately lets his opinion be known in the subheadline: “What’s called SaaS, or on-demand software, needs some debunking. For starters, it isn’t cheap, and your data aren’t secure.”
The article’s setup:
The biggest bucket of myths I hope to bust centers on a technology that many business owners are hearing a lot about these days. It’s known as Software as a Service (SaaS), or the idea that you can get your software delivered conveniently, and at a low price, via the Web. Unlike buying software the old-fashioned way, by paying a big licensing fee up front, you pay for SaaS—also referred to as on-demand software—in pieces, spread out over time.
But as with most IT innovation, there’s a lot of hype surrounding this technology—so much so that many of us don’t know what to believe. Is this a viable thing? Should we be using this stuff? Don’t worry, folks. I’ve done some research into this SaaS thing. Let me debunk a few myths.
Gene goes on to tackle the myths one by one.
Myth 1: SaaS is cheaper. No, it’s not. In fact, it can be a lot more expensive. Most service providers charge each user by the month. If you’ve got 10 people using a product, and they’re costing you 50 bucks a person each a month, that’s $6,000 a year. Most in-house systems have one-time licensing fees and optional support agreements. Spreading out the payments is nothing new, either; tons of software leasing companies will finance your purchase and spread out monthly payments over time. When you look at SaaS over the long term, it’s usually not a cheaper option.
Well, in my opinion, that depends. First, it depends on the type of software you’re talking about, how much it costs, and the support and upgrade costs involved. Let’s use a CRM for example. Let’s pretend you have a CRM that you have installed within your company’s network. Then compare that to a salesforce.com account that charges by the seat per month. It’s likely that the salesforce instance will be cheaper, and ontop of that, you don’t have to dedicate time, resources, or money towards upgrades, custom integration, etc. But again, that really depends. I’m sure there are instances where SaaS will cost more based solely on the pricing structure (per user/month rather than a one-time hit). But I don’t think you can categorically dismiss SaaS as a cheaper option.
Myth 2: SaaS reduces hardware investment. Well, this is only half right. Sure, the SaaS providers deal with the servers, and all the Windows headaches and patches and builds and versions and whatever. That’s their problem. But you still need fast access to the Internet. And that means workstations running versions of up-to-date operating systems, which generally means up-to-date computers. And they’ll need to be tied in, by wire or not, to hubs and routers to access the Net. And there will still be internal security and firewall issues. So you’re really not completely eliminating the IT guy. He’s like the smell from your cat’s litter box. It kind of never goes away.
I may be out of touch completely here, but I see fast access to the Internet as a given for most businesses today. While this point is not something to scoff at, I view internet access as a cost of doing business anyway, and not something new as a result of SaaS.
Myth 3: SaaS is quicker to set up. This is like Ikea saying its furniture is easy to assemble. One look at the lopsided bookcase in my den proves that little theory wrong. The same goes for software. Sure, if you’ve got a basic setup, then no problem: Just flick the switch and go. But what if your needs are more complex? What if you need customization? Snazzy reports? Integration with other systems? Now you’re adding complexity. And whether an application is sitting on a server in Taiwan or a server in your office, someone’s got to do the work.
I’m not sure about this one. I mean, I agree that there will always be a learning curve involved with setting up and customizing any piece of software. But the example myth here is that SaaS is “quicker” to set up than the alternative. So with that said, I’ll agree that there’s nothing inherent in software as a service that makes it faster to set up than installed software.
Myth 4: Your data are secure and backed up. Baloney. They’re about as secure as the personal data on 650,000 customers lost by GE Money (GE). Or that confidential Al Qaeda data left on a train by a British intelligence agent. Or Willie Randolph’s status as the Mets’ manager until about a month ago. I don’t care how many redundancies and data centers and encryption are baked into the system. Accessing your data over the Internet in 2008 is fraught with risk.
Interesting one here. I think I feel pretty secure about the backup side of this issue, but the security point is interesting. I don’t have the figures, but again, I think it all depends on the type of SaaS you’re talking about. This is probably the most valid point the article makes.
Myth 5: You’ve actually been using SaaS for years—look at your bank account. Right. And when my SaaS vendor is backed by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., maybe this story will hold. But in the meantime, what if I’ve got a billing dispute with you, and you decide to shut off my service? What if you send me my data on a CD, and I can’t even open the data because I don’t have your application? What if the government or some competitor subpoenas you for my information? What if the unthinkable happens and, gulp, my Internet connection goes down. Gasp. How do I get my work done? Yes, I realize that we’ve “hosted” our financial data with banks for many years before SaaS. But we’re talking a totally different set of rules, so let’s not even go there, girl.
Another good point, but one that can be alleviated by clear export and data rights contracts. First, unless the SaaS gives you export options that let you push your data to other applications, why would you sign the contract?
All in all, I think this is a really good article, as it shows the risks and fears associated with software as a service. While I don’t fully buy into the SaaS bashing completely, these are the kinds of issues that must be resolved by SaaS vendors.
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Welcome to BtoBSaaS.com
Posted on April 3rd, 2009 1 commentWelcome to BtoBSaaS.com, a site dedicated to Software as a Service providers with a business focus. This blog started in April of 2009 as a resource chronicling the various SaaS alternatives to installed software. The site is edited by Nathan Burke, Marketing Manager at Boston-area SaaS startup Aprigo.
