Jeffrey Kaplan, Managing Director of ThinkStrategies, recently wrote an article for ComputerWorld that discusses the top five SaaS myths and the reality of them. What's interesting is that, in general, many people assume that with the current state of the economy fewer companies are adopting new software. However, this is far from the truth. In fact, the economy is likely one of the primary driving factors behind the recent growth of SaaS.
Among the myths Kaplan addresses are:
Myth No. 1: SaaS is a peripheral trend. On the contrary, according to a recent ThinkStrategies survey, SaaS usage had jumped from 32% of respondents in 2007 to 63% in 2008.
Myth No. 2: SaaS offers just one type of application. The fact is, there are several applications available using the SaaS delivery model. In fact, ThinkStrategies directory of SaaS providers includes 950 companies across more than 80 different industries and application areas.
Myth No. 3: SaaS just offers skinnier versions of more sophisticated applications. Actually most SaaS vendors offer the exact same feature set in their SaaS solutions as with traditional on-premise applications. And that's one of the attractions of SaaS by smaller businesses. They're able to leverage the same applications and larger enterprises without having to purchase, install, and maintain costly hardware.
Myth No. 4: SaaS is less reliable and less secure than on-premises applications. The recent service disruption issues by Google and SalesForce.com have generated a lot of attention but this is more a case of people hearing more about the bad than reporting on the good. In fact, these types of issues happen very infrequently and, further, there has been no known reports of a major security breaches of an SaaS application.
Myth No. 5: IT professionals are uniformly opposed to SaaS. As SaaS adoption grows, more and more IT staff are realizing the numerous benefits of SaaS not only for the company but for themselves as well. Rather than seeing SaaS as a threat to their job, they're understand that it actually presents a better way to manage application deployment and the ongoing management of enterprise solutions.
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