The-Marker recently published an article titled “A New and Wonderful World of Software” regarding SaaS - Software as a Service.
The article is in Hebrew, but is basically outlines the known advantages of SaaS applications. An interesting point that is raised, though, pertains to information security.
The article quotes some key speakers who claim that one of the main pain-points in SaaS is a psychological barrier, deriving from firms’ apprehension of storing their sensitive information in a remote server.
I tend to agree. I have experienced the same apprehension during the period I made use of the Salesforce.com CRM. I was quite reluctant to upload detailed information into the CRM, and eventually, this was one of the reasons I gave it up altogether…
I hope that a trend of SaaS without HaaS would soon emerge, pure Software as a Service, without Hosting as a Service. This means that my information would be kept solely on my servers, while I would be able to run, upon demand, the software itself from the supplier’s server.
True, this would add a layer of complexity to the software, which would have to identify and deal with cases in which the information is not stored properly on my servers.
However, SaaS without HaaS is technologically feasible. From the vendor’s perspective, potential advantages that come to mind are –
- Reducing the SaaS psychological barrier. Of course, the vendors would have to convince the Customers that none of their information leaks in the process of using the software.
- Reducing costs. No need to cater for the information hosting, storage, backup, etc.
Your thoughts? Yes, dear readers, this is another invitation to comment…
I like the idea of SaaS without HaaS very much. In my experience, the SMB market will still go with SaaS. In fact, in many verticals, they love the idea of taking the responsibility of securing their data off their shoulders. And yet, SaaS without Haas can be the ultimate answer to the large enterprise market, that has still not fully adopted the services model, for some of the reasons that you counted.
If you look at companies such as Scansafe, Qualys, Purewire and others, they focus on the SMB market. Companies like ISS (nowdays IBM) do adopt some of the on-site options. Qualys, BTW, does implement SaaS without Haas in its full meaning.