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In a blog post on silicon.com, Dale Vile says yes, the bandwagon is rolling for SaaS, but companies are hesitant to turn everything over to SaaS -- nothing we haven't heard before.

He then goes on to outline the usual arguments. Businesses don't want to turn over their data to a third-party and they worry about security when the data sits outside the company's four walls.

But then Vile raises another interesting point that SaaS can take upgrade control out of customers' hands. He recounts how a demonstration of an application showed significant new functionality that would boost his business, but because of the nature of the SaaS application, it would be months before the upgrade would be rolled out -- and nothing could be done for Vile's company to access the new functionality before that. As of the writing, it had been six months and would be another three months for the service upgrade -- so Vile's company began looking for an alternative provider that could offer the functionality more quickly.

This led to a lesson that before committing to any SaaS application that customers should make sure they are "on the same page as the provider" for upgrade philosophy and practice, and he pointed out that new releases from faster moving providers could be a distraction for companies that want stability.

I thought Vile raised some interesting points that haven't been discussed as much in SaaS media. What do you think? Is there any way for SaaS vendors to keep everyone happy?

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