Being SaaSy has its challenges!!

By.S.Suren :

We have some top ERP vendors entering the SaaS ring with their set of application suites, however though many analyst and experts in the field regard this to be the next most important area for software vendors to concentrate, they also emphasis the challenges it bring with it.

Though most of these challenges have been related to technical, service standards, licensing revenue, I feel that an important issue that needs more attention is the client’s acceptability of a solution where they are ready to let their sensitive data reside in a server that they might not have complete control over.

With CRM solutions (e.g. salesforce.com) and certain other business solutions having being operating in SaaS environment, it’s quite understandable to think that since clients have accepted this type of a solution architecture with modules such as CRM which is likely to have more sensitive data, they will not have many concerns with doing the same with their ERP application or will they ??

I guess it would differ based on the clients loyalty to the ERP Vendors, if they have been using the system for a long time and are happy with the solutions provided they would perhaps accept to the decision to operate on a hosted solution, but the level of service standards and solutions given would be the responsibility of the consultancy provider who was involved, so in cases of vendors like SAP, the push to move from a standard locally maintained solution to a hosted solution should come from the consulting partner I would guess.

However, we should not forget the cultures of data ownership in different regions, yes I did say region, its is likely that in some regions clients are more comfortable with being able to see their servers physically and would surely be a bit skeptical about accepting for the vendor to hold their data elsewhere, though there are always likely to be exceptions to this. I believe that this could be because of the laws on data ownership and misappropriation and the lack of strict adherence to them in these regions.

Well, I am sure this subject could well be debated and could very well prove to be wrong with the increasing use of data applications and the impact that globalization is having on these regions, all this I am sure will lead to improvements in all other related aspects, hopefully having a greater impact on the laws as mentioned earlier.Keeping the above in mind, the following is small lists of other issues I feel could not help encouraging being SaaSy:

• · Technical implications of hosting a core business solution.
• · Service Standards – being a hosted solution residing at vendor site, clients will be expecting the service standards to be high.
• · Data Backups coordination with vendors.
• · User licensing considerations
• · For clients, it would be convincing certain stakeholders of solutions such as this.

Hope you found this post informative and useful.

Feel free to send me your comments and suggestions to ssurenlk@msn.com

Have a nice day.