The Spinosa Factor

I was having a conversation today with one of our clients that helps to connect and resell our services through their organization. He was dealing with a client that would be more interested in an “on-site” solution that we would create to better address their web presence need.

Even today I have a hard time understanding why anyone would want to manage, maintain and get one time custom solutions for standard web presences. Even custom solutions with extended needs is better left in the hands of a web firm that can manage and monitor your environment plus any software issues that may arise.

Certainly I’m sure there are moments when “Software as a Service” is offered but doesn’t make sense for the client but those moments are certainly rare (especially this day in age). Off the top of my head I can’t think of one reason outside of protecting very private and proprietary information in which the organization maintains a policy or promise to its clients that said information will never leave it’s facility (which is the case for some companies I know of).

The only way to really look at “Custom On-Site Solutions” vs. “Software As A Service” is to a breakdown of each and then compare advantages against disadvantages.

Software As A Service

Advantages (6)

1. 24/7 Monitoring
2. Fully Managed Hosting
3. Standard Software Support & Free Issue Recognition/Repair
4. Reduced Start-Up Costs
5. 100% Ownership of Data
6. Continual Upgrades and Enhancements based from user experience

Disadvantages (3)

1. Software is licensed and source code is non transferable
2. Canned solution (customization may be available but could incur extra costs)
3. Not as customizable for cross internet integration into very enterprise deployments

Custom On-Site Solution

Advantages (3 1/2)

1. Made to order solution that’s customized
2. Portable solution in its entirety including source code
3. Good for creating protected interfacing to enterprise deployments that might help with Single Sign-On or other resources (financial systems, Active Directory environments, in house database apps)
4. Avoid monthly software licensing costs? (This is a big maybe in both directions!)

Disadvantages (7)

1. Costly maintenance bills and paid for issue resolution
2. Quickly falls out of date and expensive feature enhancement
3. Maintain your own hosting environment & software
4. Setup your own monitoring tools
5. Tough to port from developer to developer
6. Double the cost up front for creation and complicated SoW
7. Low scalability

To me the decision is completely clear. Even as I write this I’m not putting any real analysis into weighing cost benefits, performance metrics, or any of the other statistical data that would truly give this argument teeth. It’s my genuine belief that the future of technology services will be to turn IT/Software into a 100% managed solution which will reside in what the world can easily reference know as the “cloud” (the cloud is one of those hippie terms internet people invented!).

The larger concern is finding a way to create reliable and secure connections back to enterprise deployments with VERY private data such as finances or customer information. Beyond accomplishing that goal we need success stories in getting people to commit into really giving it the old college try as they say. Time will help bridge this gap and a solution will become apparent in the near future.

You’ll see much more to come from me on SaaS as I want to make a true statistical business case for why it’s the ONLY solution for organizations/companies looking for cost efficient, go anywhere, easy to manage, agile software.