By Tim Ferguson, 29 September 2008 15:48
NEWS
Many businesses are still not warming to software a service (SaaS), according to BT.
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Speaking to silicon.com, general manager of SaaS at BT Business, Chris Lindsay, said: "One of the problems that we've unearthed in a survey that we did recently was about 81 per cent of customers we spoke to didn't really know about software as a service and hadn't really considered that as part of their plans for their business."
Lindsay added, the message about the benefits of SaaS still needs to be spread. "It's quite eye-opening really in terms of the lack of awareness but [also] the benefits are very clearly spelt out by the customers who have adopted the services," he said.
According to research by BT - which recently linked up with NetSuite and SugarCRM for SaaS applications - 60 per cent of companies using SaaS have reported a fall in costs, while 50 per cent said it saves them time.
Despite the initially slow take-up, the BT exec believes SaaS has reached a tipping point.
Lindsay added: "Up until now software as a service has been about proving the model and one or two hero brands kind of managing to prove and pioneer the way. What we're seeing now is that it's moving out of the innovators and early adopters to what we call the early majority."
The tide appears to be turning for SaaS. A silicon.com CIO Jury last September found half of the IT user panel marked SaaS as either not on their radar at all or is very low priority, while earlier this month research by software-as-a-service CRM company, Salesforce.com, found that many UK CIOs feel business applications will increasingly be accessed via the internet with 56 per cent saying all applications used by their organisation will be hosted online within five years.
Others though remain unconvinced on the subject of SaaS, with Citrix CTO and chair, Martin Duursma, recently saying the technology remains "several years away" from being enterprise ready.
Comments
There are 5 comments. Join the discussion
1. anonymous
I think there are several issues to overcome to get companies to buy into an SaaS model.
First of all, they still want to be able to integrate their SaaS solution with the rest of their business systems and SaaS can make that more complex, particularly if the SaaS host offers the service but hides away the source code.
Secondly, more work needs to be done on strengthening standards on SaaS platforms, so that clients can be assured that backup and failover requirements meet their own internal standards.
Clearly if the specialist cloud providers can't get it right, the technology still isn't there.
I work for a SugarCRM customisation house. SugarCRM have a particularly good SaaS offering which is fully SaaS 70 compliant.
But even then, the bulk of our customers still prefer to host the solution themselves, where they have full control and can more easily customise and integrate the solution.
2. Steve Ratcliffe
My company has been using Netsuite SaaS for a couple of years now and I just cannot see any significant issues which need to be overcome other than the reluctance of CIOs to commit to the principle of having their data in the cloud as opposed to on magnetic media on their premises. My experience is that the sales resistance is mostly a mental issue.
The issue of integration with other systems is certainly no more difficult to deal with in the case of SaaS than it would have been with on premise software. SOAP to the rescue. We integrated Netsuite with a piece of legacy software with no diffuclty at all and with rock solid reliability.
My only criticism is that the user interface (as a result of access via the web to a server 5000 miles away) isn't quite as snappy as it might be if the server were on my LAN but I have used local software which is appreciably worse. In return for the slight downsides, one gets reliability and redundancy my business couldn't afford on its own plus access from anywhere on anything from a phone to a web tablet in a warehouse.
In short, I'd say that the issues were easily worth the minor inconveniences.
3. Roger Huffadine
Same scenario as 15 years ago when this SaaS model was first launched, something akin to the paperless office and wire free desk.
4. steve crawford
As an industry I believe we're better served by not using the 'SaaS' label for selling services, but rather focusing on the capabilities. Network-delivered services is not a new concept, and treating it as one implies risk for businesses who are considering adopting SaaS solutions. There are many examples of how businesses are using services vs. an on-premise solution:
* Telephony (a classic 'SaaS' application) -- no business would ever consider building out their own dedicated phone network.
* Email couldn't happen without a centralized 'service'.
* Search, online advertising -- all are 'SaaS' apps.
* Web conferencing vs. in-person presentations.
* In the cloud security, such as Postini and many others
* Electricity delivered as a utility vs. generated on-premise
When you brewed your coffee and toasted your bread this morning, you probably weren't thinking about using EaaS (electricity as a service)...
5. Rikke Helms, Dexterra
Unfortunately, the survey results from BT aren’t entirely surprising. The onus here really falls on the carriers – if they are not packaging and promoting SaaS services effectively enough to their business customers, then how else are the customers going to know that these types of services exist?
Mobile working is one key area that the carriers could be capitalising on with SaaS. Operators are already giving their business customers handsets and voice/data minutes – hosted mobile services are a logical progression in order to help these customer make better use of their field workers. For those who are clued up on SaaS, the benefits are obvious, so the carriers really are missing a trick by not facilitating widespread uptake.