Other than the fact that by the time I get to the word "service", half of the time I say "solution" instead of service, what about the viability of SAAS?
First, to levelset, SAAS refers to those set of solutions that are 'housed' offsite at the location of the vendor who actually developed the application. If a vendor is hosting all or most of a company's software, well beyond those applications which the vendor built, that is really an outsourcing relationship and falls under different rules. These 2 approaches are seldom compatible since the cost of applications to an outsourcing relationship is usually additive and efficiences are gained from having more applications at the outsourcer.
Back to SAAS, the 3 hallmarks or selling points are (1) no IT involvement, (2) pay-as-you-go with little upfront cost and (3) the vendor takes all responsibility for infrastructure and upgrades - those invasive and non-value-added activities. The perception of SAAS is lower costs, speed to market and no IT. Interest is growing across a range of applications at my clients and much of SAAS is designed to fit within a departmental budget.
Here are some rules of thumb for the consideration of SAAS solutions, BI or otherwise:
1. Check the value proposition of the application.
Of course, this applies to any application, SAAS or otherwise. However, it's worth mentioning that there should be some bottom-line business benefit at some level to actually doing the application in the first place.
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