Making the strategic decision to move to SaaS
The growth in the SaaS market is well established and it is now accepted by a broad consensus of major industry players and customers that is here to stay. Definitions vary, but a SaaS application is simply hosted software based on standard templates and operated by a specialist provider. It is consumed in a one-to-many fashion by subscribers who pay-as they-use the applications they require. .
However, SaaS doesn’t solve every IT problem and industry momentum is not enough to base a rational buying decision on, so how do you decide what’s right for your company? In particular, what applications does it make sense to access via SaaS and which should be kept in house?
The reason SaaS came into existence is because the traditional client/server model the IT Industry had been working with for decades had serious flaws. Although customers had little choice but to learn to live with these flaws, they were far from desirable. These included issues like: high start up costs, projects which invariably overran on both budget and timescale; major in-house requirement for skilled IT staff to manage infrastructure and so on. With the recent advent of rapid, near universal Internet connectivity, it is now realistic to consider accessing hosted applications routinely.
The areas that adopted SaaS earliest were customer relationship management (CRM) and human resources (HR). This was quickly followed by solutions for email and collaboration between distributed teams (where a hosted application was ideal). A plethora of choices continues to gain momentum, but does not always contain the established names known in the IT market place. Larger, established players did not initially see SaaS as an opportunity because their traditional model has been highly lucrative and required large resources to support. Consequently many smaller, more agile firms were able to great headway although incumbent IT suppliers have slowly been forced to enter the market recently as well.
In terms of which applications, to outsource the choices are fairly clear. Once you have decided on your email solution, it’s unlikely that you could do a better job than a hosted provider. The same follows for other standard applications like CRM and many aspects of network security. On the other hand, large organisations that have core ERP applications needing a high degree of customisation and integration across enterprise wide software architectures are unlikely to find what they need from a SaaS solution.

• Portfolio breadth – are they a one trick pony or do they have a wide spread of solutions and skills? If you are buying email today, can you add CRM next year? What about Security services and connectivity? The real savings from SaaS come by selecting the right blend of services to outsource with a provider that can deliver them as an integrated solution.
• Deployment strategies – The SaaS vision is attractive – once you get there. Make sure your provider has a solid track record in managing implementations in line with your needs. An accredited, project based methodology is a necessity for larger networks, because even though SaaS is fast, large organisations sometimes aren’t. A SaaS roll out will be a lot quicker than the traditional model but needs careful planning and scheduling.
• Management and Provisioning – If you are buying multiple services, make sure the management is integrated and links with your existing infrastructure. When one service is being deployed, a standard web portal is fine: when you have multiple services and thousands of users, with inevitable change and churn of the user base, your IT staff need more. Otherwise they can spend as much time making repetitive changes on multiple web interfaces as they did looking after in-house infrastructure. Look for tools that synchronise to in-house Directory based data you already have, leveraging the effectiveness of your Admin teams
• Independent accreditations – Naturally you will expect to see relevant vendor training and certification if the SaaS software is provided by a 3rd party. If the provider is also an Independent software vendor (ISV) then they are already an authoritative partner. Ask about proof of auditing of business process to establish the way information is handled and distributed, because it’s your data and you need to be sure it’s being well looked after.