Saas downside: wrong question

From Manticore blog:

A company using Salesforce.com has found that it doesn’t do what they wanted. The only money the company invested in the application was the monthly rental, that’s all. So guess what they can do to Salesforce.com? When the company now selects an on-premise application, they will have to make a serious decision and provide serious commitment because the investment will be more significant.

I’m glad we don’t provide SaaS solutions if that’s how quickly customers can switch.

I know the author Simon Griffiths and he’s a thoroughly decent chap. Unfortunately, he’s posed the wrong question and in doing so, perversely demonstrates one of saas’s real strengths.

In the saas world, you have to deliver service all the time. It’s not optional. Contrast that to the license driven offline world. If it doesn’t work, you’re lumbered with an upfront cost you’ll likely have to write off unless you wrote a smart contract (highly unlikely.) In a world where every line tiem of cost is coming under scrutiny, you’ve got to ask which is the better alternative. An upfront rite off or a month or two of opex? It’s not a hard choice.

Tagged as: SAAS, Salesforce.com