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Business Strategy for Software Executives |
September 3, 2008 |
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SaaS Suites Struggle in the EnterpriseA look at the evidence finds that the jury is still out on whether SaaS will crack core, mission critical processes in the enterprise.By George Gilbert, Tech Strategy Partners It’s no secret Software as a Service (SaaS) has generated tremendous excitement among many customers for its apparently transformational adoption model and ownership experience. Unlike client-server applications, SaaS delivers faster time to value often via a viral buying cycle as well as lower risk deployment. The early adopter focus has been on small and midsize businesses (SMBs) because SaaS makes it economical to reach them with broad penetration for the first time. Where SaaS has carved out successes in large enterprises, it has largely been in more independent, non-mission critical departmental functions that have no CapEx budgets such as HR, CRM, or marketing, not end to end suites. Despite the undoubted progress that SaaS is making, we believe the adoption of core, mission critical processes (Financials, order management, industry-specific processes such as manufacturing or securities processing) in large enterprises is still many years out for a variety of technical and business challenges.
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SaaS is Mainstream But Won't Be UbiquitousSupporting George Gilbert’s point of view (above), Bob Tarzey shares the results of a recent study on how SaaS will fit into the next-generation of software options. Read the executive summary in this post to SandHill.com Blog on SaaS. Publish Your Perspective!SandHill.com wants your opinions. Send your thoughts on the enterprise software industry to SandHill.com editor, Maryann Jones Thompson (maryann@sandhill.com) and have your opinions published on our site. Rapidly Transform Your SalesforceTaking a phased “university approach” to change helped one company transform its sales force—successfully—in 6 months rather than the usual 12 to 24. Read more about this approach in this article from The McKinsey Quarterly. News Update: Facts and FiguresCisco takes on Microsoft; plus SaaS firms' value falls, a new CFO for Oracle, IBM improves collaboration, Spintronics emerges, and more software news of the week. Read these stories and more software news of the week in the latest SandHill.com Software News Summary. Poll: Enterprise SaaS?When will SaaS make real inroads in the enterprise? Last week, readers gave us their opinion on what the hardest part of starting a software company on a shoestring. More at SandHill.com:Google challenges Microsoft with new browser. Active Network received $80 million. Oracle to acquire ClearApp. Jeff Epstein names EVP and CFO of Oracle. Send us your feedback on this newsletter and the SandHill.com site. Parting Thought“Technology has the shelf life of a banana.” Courtesy of Malcolm Kusher, The Kushner Group |
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Cognizant is a global provider of IT, consulting and business process outsourcing services. Cognizant delivers a better Return on Outsourcing via our single-minded passion to making our customers’ businesses stronger. SOFTWARE PULSESoftware Pulse is a publication of SandHill.com, the online resource for software business strategy. To subscribe, To unsubscribe, see the bottom of this email. Send us your feedback, SandHill.com is published by Sand Hill Group, which provides investment and management advice to emerging leaders in the $600 billion enterprise software, services and solutions market. Sand Hill Group produces the Software and the Enterprise series of conferences for industry executives, and authors research reports on cutting-edge technology topics. |
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Too often, entrepreneurs pursue innovation for innovation’s sake. 