Comments on: A Few Comments On Aberdeen’s SaaS Report

By: Impartial observer

Impartial observer — Thu, 20 Jul 2006 01:23:53 +0000

I’m more with Dave than the SaaS-only SRM camp, despite having worked for a vendor of a SaaS offering. The very beauty of SaaS is that, to the end user, the experience of using the application’s features reveals nothing about the underlying deployment model (hosted versus on-premise). This de-coupling is the greatest power of SaaS. For many corporations, their IT groups simply can’t support another application deployment given workload, strategy, cost overhead, etc.

The trade-off of SaaS is fewer integration options. Fortunately for most procurement departments, they are working on the basics of SRM and don’t require anything more than arms-length interfaces to deliver the benefits within reach. Examples are supplier master sync, spend data load, purchase req creation, etc.

With procurement maturity, however, comes the tighter integration of procurement processes with other departmental functions. …And the need to touch THOSE departments’ systems in a meaningful way. I don’t think anyone is considering a SaaS sourcing solution with deep integration to a collaborative design/PLM system to support design-to-source cycles that run in days or weeks. In that respect, the ERP vendors’ solutions will ultimately appear more attractive and will sit on-premise given IT’s control of those systems.

Bottom line: the rate of procurement transformation will dictate the useful life of SaaS and how long it remains as the most common deployment model.

By: Dave Stephens

Dave Stephens — Tue, 18 Jul 2006 14:35:51 +0000

Tim’s post is definitely worth a read to understand the mindset of SaaS-only vendors. And although my position may be untraditional, I continue to be supportive of the delivery goals of SaaS. SaaS offers convenience & makes sense in many situations. However..

The fact that Tim says SaaS is “just like” open source when it comes to community is laughable. It just goes to show you how hard it is for traditional companies, wrapped in SaaS packaging, to understand the new paradigm of open source. Tim, open source means freely available source code & customer-led development! Not offering computers, A/C, and uninterruptible power to customers…

By: Supply Excellence » Dave Stephens Stirs On Demand Debate

Supply Excellence » Dave Stephens Stirs On Demand Debate — Tue, 18 Jul 2006 13:36:46 +0000

[...] Last week, Procurement Central attempted to incite a new war over On Demand and Software as a Service (SaaS). ERP executive-turned-blogger-turned-open source evangelist Dave Stephens used the release of Aberdeen Group’s latest On Demand Supply Management Benchmark report to try to minimize the significance of On Demand and SaaS as merely a new flavor of application hosting. [...]