SaaS and The Enterprise
The term SaaS (Software as a Service) is very well known today in the Web 2.0 cloud. It represents a loosely coupled bunch of software services hosted online that are accessible by customers on a paid-per-user/subscription basis. If extended further, it can also be used in a non-paying/subscription context where customers get unlimited usage of the underlying functionality of the software.
The functionality is normally exposed through a REST API or Web Services (such as Java’s JAX-WS). Ebay, Basecamp, Flickr, Facebook all expose their functionality through Web APIs that the client can consume to use such service.
SaaS is gaining such popularity that a lot of traditional software companies like MYOB are moving towards the model as well. SAP has adapted the model a while back.
For the public however, SaaS in a lot of ways represents a whole spectrum of Mashup APIs that you can find these days at places like ProgrammableWeb . Users can create their own information portlets or portals for their own purposes. Google Gadgets is a good example.
It seems from the outset that SaaS is doing well. Shouldn’t the enterprise jump into the bandwagon as well? A number of big organisations however may have trouble adapting the SaaS model due to security and operational risk purposes. Afterall, who would want their top secret information being shared and hosted on a 3rd party vendor’s information server.
It’s not all doom and gloom for Enterprises and SaaS though, as proven by mySAP. Just dump all SaaS-es behind a firewall (self-host), protected by SSL OR get it hosted by a recognised Big 4 vendor that may not exhibit a conflict of interest in the business arena. In IBM’s case, they could easily provide such a solution to their clients. SAP choosed IBM to host their mySAP and charges users (presumebly corporate users) $x per month. This eliminates a lot of traditional licensing issues associated with a standalone product. The client only pays to use the service. IBM is well known for storage and server technology and would have the necessary technical specialty to provide support, which is more crucial than ever in a SaaS world.
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