Comments on: SaaS Won’t Kill On-Premise Software – Take Two

By: Joe Panettieri

Joe Panettieri — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 22:24:48 +0000

Gina T: Thanks for coming back and taking the time to explain your thoughts. I do believe in SaaS, but your concerns are well stated.

By: Gina T

Gina T — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 19:00:05 +0000

What I am saying… like a surgeon who protects your heart, vital to your survival. He is not thinking about your heart in particular but your survival. If he keeps killing his patients, nobody will want to visit his office.
So I am saying the SaaS values your data, but values his future earnings more!
Does this leave the door open to corruption? Who is the top bidder for my data?
Does this leave the door open to integrity? In order for me to be sustainable I must protect the data and my customers, even from myself?
That is the challenge!

By: Joe Panettieri

Joe Panettieri — Thu, 30 Apr 2009 01:21:39 +0000

Gina: I sort of follow your argument but I don’t follow your ultimate point.

Are you saying the SaaS service provider…
1. doesn’t value the customer data?
2. but protects the data nonetheless because the service provider wants to remain in business?

By: Gina T

Gina T — Thu, 30 Apr 2009 00:42:09 +0000

Have you thought about the fact that the only value your mission critical data has to the people who own the Software as a Service is that if the server is breatched or data is lost then business and crediblity are toast! That mission critical data is yours…and yours alone. It is not even considered data to the business team but a service that generates revenue for the buisness and every employees’s goal and ownership in that business is to ensure that it is secure, safe and solid?

By: Stu

Stu — Tue, 07 Apr 2009 17:06:41 +0000

I just got out of a mtg with a co-lo and while he and I have our biases, I think that I’m like many business owners where I’d never want to fork over my mission critical data to anyone else or not know who might have access to it…..

With a SAAS solution, at least 2 other parties have access to my client data; whoever is hosting it in the cloud or the co-lo and the provider of the software. That’s way too many eyes to see my sensitive client info.

Stu
Stu@southernlendingsolutions.com

By: Stuart Kushner

Stuart Kushner — Mon, 06 Apr 2009 20:40:48 +0000

I agree with Brian de Haaff. You have to take a long view. Ultimately, the browser will be the operating system and application development neutrality will be restored to the PC thus compelling Microsoft to openly and fairly compete for application supremacy.

It is just a matter of time.

Regards,
Stu Kushner
http://www.progoffice.com

By: Brian de Haaff

Brian de Haaff — Mon, 06 Apr 2009 16:51:02 +0000

We should stop trying to be so diplomatic. The truth is that SaaS is killing on premise-software (and servers for that matter).

It is predicted to be a $4B market in the IT Management category alone by 2013 (Forrester).

I think that there are two key concepts that help broaden the ongoing discussion.

* As an MSP, I also have core competencies
* As an MSP, I have to win business first to then gain economies of scale

As one of our customers told me last week “my core competence is service” and I want someone else to automate all of the technology on the backend. He went on to say “I would run everything out of the cloud, if I could.”

This is something that we hear over and over again and is why so many MSPs are choosing SaaS. Just like their customers, they benefit if they do not need to buy expensive servers and pay for and manage their own complex software. Who wants to deploy a server every time a new customer is signed up? Who wants to manage a cluster of servers and need to upgrade software all the time at their HQ?

This leads to the second point. You need to win business to grow a managed services business. Most of our MSP customers use Paglo for their first client assessment (sometimes pre sale and sometimes post sale – sometimes paid and sometimes not). Deploy a single crawler on an existing server and off you go. Compare that to carrying in your own server, setting up complex discovery templates, and configuring complex on-site software. It’s a no brainer.

If SaaS was not so disruptive, we would not be seeing every outdated managed services platform vendor scrambling to offer a hosted version. Let’s admit to ourselves what is happening so we can move on and talk about the different SaaS options.

Brian de Haaff
Paglo – leader in On-demand IT Management
CEO
http://www.paglo.com