Last night, I was honored to be a panelist for the Southeastern Software Association's discussion on Software as a Service. The panel had several members from telecommunications and other areas of infrastructure. It became clear that there are definitely some solutions that should be considered as SaaS solutions in almost all cases. One solution that I found compelling was outsourced Exchange Servers managed by USA.net. David Ramon, CEO and President, USA.net, explained that 97% of Exchange Servers are in-house applications. Given the ability to map your email domain to a 3rd party who can effectively deliver higher SLA's at a lower cost, I am not sure why you wouldn't consider USA.net to manage your email servers. On the other side of the equation, I discussed the pro's and con's of SaaS for enterprise applications. In the CRM market, I suggested that each company really needs to evaluate their needs before deciding to deploy in a SaaS or On-Premise solution. For very complex integrations with mission critical applications, SaaS has some challenges that companies like Salesforce.com do not want to openly discuss. For example, if you have ten to fifteen backend systems with multiple customer records in each system, you will need a good process for data cleansing. Typically, you will cleanse in a staging area prior to loading into your CRM solution. Although this can be done prior to loading into a SaaS solution, you have already created the IT infrastructure to manage the cleansing process, so I would question your cost savings by outsourcing the application piece given all the other work on your end. More importantly, if you have a lot of legacy integration points, you will be limited by most SaaS vendors to their proprietary API's. That means that you will have several integration options based on the SaaS vendors chosen integration methods. If you have new systems that are all web service enabled, then you are probably fine. However, if you have some legacy systems that require more expensive methods like many mainframe applications, then you are going to require a significant amount of work to integrate. Unfortunately, once you integrate and load your customer data into the SaaS application vendors system, you will begin to feel somewhat locked into that solution. You better hope that they do not change pricing on you in the future because you will have no choice at that point. So what is a better approach you ask? Well, I am not suggesting that the above above is incorrect, however, I would suggest that you explore the more open solutions. Obviously, I am a huge advocate of SugarCRM, but there are other solutions that provide open integration methods that will not create vendor lock-in. I would suggest that you explore all your options and keep in mind integration, pricing, and long term flexibility when deciding on your CRM solution. Don't just go for the latest fad which currently is SaaS. Remember that SaaS is a deployment option, not a software solution....
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