ON THE MYTHS OF SOFTWARE-AS-A-SERVICE (CRM)

OLD IS NEW

BusinessWeek has a good article for mainstream audiences, explaining the Software-as-a-Service (aka SaaS) mega-trend that is currently in the early stages of being underway in the enterprise world.  It starts off by describing the poster-boy of SaaS, Software.com:

"This new form of software-as-a-service, or SaaS, has been spearheaded by Salesforce.com's (CRM) customer relationship management and salesforce automation applications..."

"Salesforce.com has been in business over five years, has more than 399,000 subscribers at 20,500 companies worldwide, and is growing at about 80% a year. NetSuite has been in business eight years, and company officials say it has thousands of customers globally using its online applications."

The article also imaginatively brings in examples of SaaS from the past,

"The oldest and biggest SaaS purveyor? ADP (ADP) -- the world's largest payroll application outfit -- has been in business for nearly 60 years, generated $8.5 billion in revenues last year, and served about 590,000 clients worldwide..."

...and the future:

"And don't look now, but online gaming and video-on-demand also can be considered forms of SaaS."

Recommended for those who had general questions about SaaS, but were too busy to ask.

Comments

[Jason Wood]

Michael,

I agree the article was well intended, particularly for the generalist audience that gets its tech news from BusinessWeek, but don't you find some of those "myths" rather questionable?

Does anyone that pays attention to SaaS, even tangentially, really think SaaS is going to "fade over time?" I would contend the much more significant myth that needs debunking is that SaaS is going to be the death knell for traditional software license models.

SaaS is significant, but multiple delivery and pricing models is the wave of the future, not a revolutionary change over to SaaS or OnDemand exclusively.

I blogged about this from that perspective if you're interested...

http://woodrow.typepad.com/the_ponderings_of_woodrow/2006/04/businessweek_8_.html