Whose SaaS is it?
The SaaSCon conference is over. The blogs of SaaS enthusiasts are full with what they learnt, liked, and disliked about the discussions.
[Check out some of the better ones at Gianpaolo’s Blog, West Coast Grid, Paul Gillin’s Blog and Yet Another Software Blog]
One aspect that I was particularly interested in was how the discussions would address the issue of growing divide between the IT organization and the line-of-business managers over IT implementations in general and SaaS implementations in particular.
Last month, in a story on SaaS, I had singled out the challenge of integrating today’s decentralized, somewhat unorganized SaaS implementations (at business unit levels) into the enterprise system as the key challenge.
My concern was that while everyone is busy discussing the advantages/disadvantages of SaaS over the traditional licensing model, this implementation challenge, waiting to explode, is not even talked about. I had also raised the issues of sourcing and governance, and the need for the IT managers and LOB managers to recognize and respect the value brought to the table by each other.
For most enterprises, the challenge is to step back and consider a coherent, centralized SaaS strategy, while still allowing room for decentralized implementations in areas where that is needed. While the individual business units decide on their applications, they must conform to some common standards laid down by the central IT department. In short, there should be a SaaS/on-demand framework for the entire organization.
Since it was becoming a services game, where stakes would be high, some experience in services sourcing would be helpful if we do not want to re-live the bad experience that many organizations had while outsourcing.
A SaaS strategy that involves the central IT department, adds business discipline to the sourcing and governance of SaaS providers. Many IT executives today possess some provider management and evaluation skills, a lot of which they have learned the hard way.
This stance was criticized in a blog by Tim Minahan (I am not complaining, though).
Das focuses on the implications SaaS may have on the IT organization. His article reads more like a treatise for the protection of endangered IT executive, rather than a SaaS expose.
That was not my point. And the criticism is beside the point. What I am more interested about is the debate itself.So, I was expecting some serious discussion on this at the SaaSCon ’06 but was fairly disappointed when I did not see anything on that being reported in any coverage of the event. One reason could be the user panel in the conference — The Skeptical CIO — consisted of CIOs and the LOB managers were not represented. SaaS vendors, no matter how much they talk about the savvy line managers, are still after the CIOs, because they hold the IT purse strings in most organizations.
The closest that I found was in Gianpaolo’s Blog, where this is what he had described as one of the key takeaways.
The CIO job might even get more “interesting” (read complex) due to additional sourcing choices and also due to the potential proliferation of SaaS usage within the enterprise without IT involvement, resulting in the need of adapting the IT governance processes (I had hinted to something along these lines here); but on the other hand, if done successfully the embracement of SaaS and the resulting richer user centric application creation, could help turn the CIO (and IT in general) into a more “partner” organization to business units than a “necessary evil”.
In fact, in one of his earlier posts, he had addressed this very issue.
Another dramatic change will be how IT will enforce which software is used in the enterprise. I am far from surprise to see that IT shops are afraid of SaaS; no longer being the gatekeepers of the “operational” aspects of software, some are experiencing first hand that they are having less control on what gets used
The debate, it seems, will continue. SaaS vendors — especially those that are celebrating their quick success (“IT department be damned”) will do better to do a soft marketing of the concept, in addition to the hard sell of their solutions.
Shyamanuja – Thank you for the article and recommended blogs on the SaaS topic. One of our large IT services clients is really ramping up their SaaS team here in the US and I wondered if you or some of the readers might have suggestions the best spots to recruit in this niche area. The rich industry and content expertise and overall sophistication of our client’s solutions dictates that we deliver candidates with true specialization coupled with the client-facing, relationship profesionalism and confidence of only the vary best. I do not share this lightly and would truly appreciate your recommendations. Thank you.
Lori Blackman