Pioneering vendors of software-as-a-service (SaaS) have spent the better
part of a decade defending their model against purveyors of traditional
on-premise software.
They have made their point, perhaps to their own chagrin.
As the market for SaaS has opened up to enterprise-class customers and
beyond customer relationship management (CRM) to a fuller array of
solutions, traditional software vendors, such as SAP , IBM
, Oracle
and Microsoft
, are beginning to see the wisdom of offering software on demand.
Given their resources, some say, those companies are poised not only to
participate, but even dominate the SaaS space.
Joshua Greenbaum, principal analyst at Enterprise Applications Consulting,
told internetnews.com that even a market-leading pure-play SaaS
vendor like Salesforce.com cannot match the level of
systems integration that an SAP or Oracle can provide their customers.
He noted that Siebel founder Tom Siebel had admitted that his company could
not match SAP and Oracle in terms of integrating CRM with other back-end
enterprise solutions.
“They hit a wall,” said Greenbaum. “Both [SAP and Oracle] have this broader
depth of functionality and broader view of an integrated enterprise, so
without a doubt, Salesforce is very vulnerable,” he said.
The market opportunity is there, and traditional vendors are already
beginning to take part.
The many flavors of SaaS
More enticing yet for traditional software vendors, SaaS is now gaining
acceptance in the enterprise beyond CRM and other partner-related solutions.
Pure-play SaaS vendors like nSite, with a business process management
solution, Kana with on-demand knowledge management, and Agile with product lifecycle management tools on demand, are
beginning to encroach on the traditional bastions of on-premise enterprise
software vendors.
Even such sacrosanct functions as security are being addressed by companies
like Qualys and IBM.
This is happening because customers see an opportunity to reduce both cost
and risk.
Philippe Courtot, chairman and CEO of Qualys, has seen the evolution first
hand. His company boasts 22 of the Fortune 100 as customers.
“IT departments are under huge pressure to do more with less resources,” he
told internetnews.com.
“Early adopters [of Qualys security solutions] like Apple and Thomson Financial
were all under very
significant budgetary constraints,” he said.
Denis Pombriant, managing principal at Beagle Research, noted that SaaS
vendors have not only reduced the cost of these solutions, but also the risk
of purchasing and maintaining them.
On-demand software is “a paradigm that reduces cost and risk for any company
that depends on software to do its business,” he said.
Tom Noonan, CEO of ISS , explained that customers now
accept that security, the most private and least likely application to be
managed outside the firewall, can be better served in just that way.
“Security features are popping up in every aspect of our infrastructure,
from networks to applications to servers and operating systems. They have
become a nightmare for CIOs.
“The questions is ‘how do I manage it and ensure
a consistent level of protection?’ On-demand provides that capability.”
Software companies have to go against their grain
The opportunities are ripe, but traditional vendors still face significant
hurdles.
Everything about the way traditional software vendors do business would have
to change, from how they upgrade their solutions to how they compensate
sales people and recognize revenue.
“The question becomes are they willing to make that technical and cultural
shift,” explained Beth Enslow, vice president of consulting firm Aberdeen
Group.
The software vendors will also have to be willing to rewrite most if not all
of their code.
“You cannot take your old enterprise solution and just deliver it through
the browser,” noted Courtot. “You don’t change an architecture just like
that.”
That may help explain why Microsoft has delayed
bringing its own on-demand CRM solution to market until next year.
Indeed, the major players are already beginning to respond to those
challenges.
“The traditional on-premise players see there are advantages to having a
multi-tenant model,” said Liz Herbert, an analyst who follows SaaS for
Forrester Research.
Multi-tenancy is one of the principal architectural attributes of the SaaS
model because many customers share the same infrastructure, generating
significant economies of scale.
Oracle uses hosted infrastructure provided by IBM to enable multi-tenancy
for its on-demand offering.
SAP does as well, but has not committed fully to a multi-tenant approach.
However, SAP is less concerned with economies of scale because it targets
primarily large implementations.
It remains to be seen whether on-premise vendors will successfully make the
leap to the on-demand paradigm.
But the feeling is that they would be wise to get on board.
“We’re seeing the ship sail. People have to think about getting on the
boat,” noted Pombriant.
