SaaS adopters go through three phases: “The Comfort Zone”, “The Enlightenment” and “The Reassessment”. That’s how Avigdor Luttinger describes the ups and downs of the bittersweet relationship that SaaS adopters go through.
Many SaaS deployments start small and under the radar of traditional IT organizations. Often they support small groups or departments.
But as those installations become successful and begin to grow, they come under company scrutiny on a variety of levels. To name a few, these include:
- IT staff have concerns about security
- Finance people begin to question the costs and license/subscription fees as the number of users increase
- SaaS systems can become silos of important information that aren’t connected to other company systems
The argument goes that many SaaS installations provide APIs and integration points. Integration and adoption of SaaS systems as full-fledged enterprise applications is the best approach.
It’s an interesting discussion, particularly because these problems are not new. The ’silo of information’ and other issues are no different than the problems that traditional software systems has experienced for years. So, while there are clear advantages to SaaS, it should be recognized that it is not a silverbullet for solving every problem.
