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8 Myths of Software-as-a-Service
abb_road writes "BusinessWeek looks at the current state of software-as-a-service, arguing that the model is well established and is distinct from failed ASP/Hosting models of the dot-com era. Far from a passing fad, the model is starting to see large-scale adoption, and traditional vendors are having trouble revamping their applications and financials to get in on the action. From the article, 'As SaaS gains mainstream acceptance, it is becoming an important disruptive force in the software industry. And as long as the quality and reliability of SaaS solutions continues to improve, the appeal of SaaS isn't going to go away.'"
"Software as a service" is almost as old as the public internet. Many banks, hospitals and government institutions have been running remotely hosted mainframe apps for over 2 decades ... it's quite proven successful business model.
This message brought to you by Salesforce.com This article reads like a press release from Salesforce.com, the biggest player in the "software as a service" marketspace. I tried Salesforce when I started my VoIP business; if they're the market leader, this industry is too immature to be taken seriously.
First off, it isn't cheap--Salesforce.com is $65 per month, per seat and it has to be paid 3 months in advance. This makes it quite a bit more expensive for small businesses than say Goldmine or ACT. Secondly, the reliability was horrible. CRM is the lifeblood of any organization. *Any* downtime results in all of your customer facing people (sales team, customer support staff, billing, etc) basically sitting around on their hands. Sales leads were lost and customers were pissed off. The worst part about it is that we couldn't do anything about it. I couldn't reboot a server, rebuild table indexes, sacrifice an intern... nothing. I wasn't told what the problem was when the system came back up, nor was I even notified *when* they came back online. And I wasn't given an apology or a service credit.
After several very public blackeyes Salesforce finally released a systems status page. In a pure act of corporate hubris they named it http://trust.salesforce.com/. You know know something's deeply wrong when a simple status screen is given that hard of a PR spin. Sorry, but they already blew my trust. I don't care what BusinessWeek says, I wholeheartly recommend that an organization keep their key systems in-house!
Entrepreneur : (noun), French for "unemployed"
It makes sense for a lot of software applications to move online. For instance, I filed my taxes online using TurboTax.com today. The application was easy to use and worked just fine in Firefox. It makes sense to the companies behind these applications because instead of having to deploy multiple versions for every possible obsolete platform (from Win98 to Mac OS 9) that customers may have, they can deploy to specific browser configurations. Plus, as another poster mentioned, bug fixes are built in.
In 10 years' time, I doubt we'll use CDs or DVDs for much. I don't have a CD drive on my current laptop and I have only missed it once since my initial install -- and that was to install an older version of Quickbooks (newer versions are available for download instead of on a CD.) CD-ROM only drives are quickly becoming as obsolete as floppy drives as we move to the Internet for software, music, and movie distribution. As online storage and backup services take over, the idea of backing up to a CD-RW or DVD-RW will also become obsolete. We'll be able to "jack in" anywhere, from any PC/Mac/Internet cafe terminal, authenticate ourselves, and have instant access to all of our data. TurboTax, SalesForce.com and other services like it are just the beginning.
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We are probably going to switch away from Salesforce to an open-source package. Why?
1) The open-source tool is cheaper. MUCH cheaper, as in $0.00 vs around $12,000 per year.
2) The open-source tool is not as good as Salesforce, but it does everything we need.
3) The open-source tool runs on our internal network, so it's faster and more reliable than Salesforce.
4) Although Salesforce has a pretty decent API for developing custom apps, nothing beats having the source.
5) Our data is OUR DATA, and we don't want lock-in.
The article makes 2 points:
1. The business climate is different
2. The ASPs tried to host apps that hadn't really been designed to run over the Net. The new generation is using apps that have been specifically been written with that in mind.
I'm not sure I believe the hype, but at least get the author's points right.
The oldest such applications I've had to deal with are time logging application. My employers have had to charge by the hour for my time with the clients. So they always have some sort of web based time logging application. Usually there is also a way to enter expenses and such for reimbursement.
... how hard is it to write a web site to enter hours and tasks.
Every one of these application that I have had to deal with has been very difficult to use. My theory is that they sell the application to one of the bosses based on the way the reports look. They make the user interface for the reports work well. That helps two people per company and saves their time. The people who enter time get the short end of the stick and 200 people waste their time and energy trying to enter hours.
I mean
The first one I had to use only worked right if you used the "right" screen resolution. You were supposed to change your screen resolution to run their application. And, if you didn't, the windows would be too small. They wouldn't scroll. They wouldn't resize. And you couldn't see the OK button at the bottom.
Another one, two years later, would lose everything you entered if you tried to print it at the wrong time.
The one I am using now (in 2006 after 5 years of these sinister felons) makes you go through 5 screen clicks to add more than 40 hours. If you go in to enter your hours after 6 pm on Friday it will default to next week. The first time I didn't know it and entered and submitted all my hours on the wrong week.
I think the it shows the real problem with the business model. There is no incentive to improve the time usage for the people that do the work. The word comes down from on high because the sales doesn't have to convince more than a few people that use the application. This makes the choice of such software a burden on the company's bottom line because, by choosing it, they waste their employee's time.
time is money
He means SugarCRM. It's an OSS Salesforce-a-like.
We deployed it at 3.5.1 (about six months ago) and it has improved significantly since then. Overall I guess it's OK but still has a way to go, particularly on the documentation front. Reliability has been good in a kinda "we haven't lost any data" fashion. Performance is shoddy, but we're running it on a fairly slow box. Quicker than Salesforce though. The source is a bit scary and while there is a SOAP API the documentation (again) is shite.
BTW, you can export from Salesforce in any one of a dozen ways so I wouldn't get tense about that.
Sugar themselves are a bit weird. It took a while to be able to buy support queries ($95 a pop or $295 for five, IIRC), the organisation being set up a bit *too* focussed on upselling to Sugar pro or whatever it's called. They seem to be an organisation that learns, however, and hopefully people like me ringing up and trying to give them money for support queries will change their tune fairly quickly.
With any luck it turns into a big OSS success story.
Dave
I write a blog now, you should be afraid.