Rejecting SaaS as a Core Platform? Throwaway Software? - SaaS Week

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May 22, 2008
Rejecting SaaS as a Core Platform? Throwaway Software?

An article in ZDNet UK documents the reluctance of some businesses to use SaaS as a "core platform." The article describes how some companies, such as Kraft Foods, say they do not want to use SaaS because they wish for an integrated software architecture and believe that SaaS does not necessarily support that goal.

Another company, Telkom Indonesia, says it is reluctant to use SaaS because it wants its core business applications onsite -- although the company executive quoted said he was perfectly willing to look at push-mail or personal web applications through SaaS.

I was curious to see these claims. There are more and more companies choosing to use core applications through SaaS for various reasons, but rarely does it seem to be about using SaaS for SaaS sake so much as the right tool for the job and situation. Most SaaS applications are fairly young and the majority still target the SMB space even though there seems to be an increasing movement toward SaaS in the enterprise.

There was another article along this lines in Ephraim Schwart's Reality Check blog on InfoWorld. In it, Schwartz says that conventional wisdom is that SaaS may be destined to replace on-premise software but that perhaps the truth is that SaaS is just "throwaway software." Companies are using SaaS as an interim solution to problems and then dumping it for something better later on. He then predicts that SaaS might just be a blip on the software screen that won't last.

I can't say I agree on that point. I think that the reasons why companies choose SaaS applications aren't likely to go away. It's really just a delivery mode, after all...and it solves business problems that aren't always solvable through on-premise software. Whether SaaS will ever "replace" on-premise software is anyone's guess but I don't see a future where SaaS would turn out to just be some temporary fad that goes away. I do, however, agree that whether or not a particular piece of software was delivered through SaaS or on-premise may not be a terribly interesting subject someday in the future when SaaS stops being an emerging technology and IT press buzzword du jour.