It appears that the vision and reality of SaaS (Software as a Service) has attracted the largest independent software vendor (ISV), SAP. SAP is a large enterprise application software company out of Germany that created a big craze in the 1990s and obtained a good majority of commercial America to consolidate its data needs under a single umbrella called ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning). Evidently, after seeing Salesforce and others begin to erode its mindshare, if not market share, in the small to medium-sized market, the company decided to release its own customer relationship management offering over the web.
Now the only question is whether they can pull off having their customers switch over to their own web offering rather than take the opportunity to shop the other vendors at the same time. That is always a risk when the market begins to change! Many times customer behavior is not anticipated by the incumbent vendor.
I contend that just because a company can produce software for sale does not mean it can keep servers and infrastructure up and running to suit the client requirements. By the same token, although Salesforce.com has successfully blazed the trail in the SaaS world, that does not give it credibility if it chose to come out with a client-server architecture solution. Supporting a different type of solution is a different ball game than what a company and its culture is built to do effectively and efficiently.
If asked by its vendor to consider a new platform offering, a truly wise customer will evaluate its other options before jumping into the new offering of their incumbent vendor. Before automatically jumping into the new solution, ask yourself the following questions:
- Is the new solution stable? Is it designed to be used as you want to use it?
- If the offering is built on a different technology than the vendor’s “bread and butter” technology? Is the vendor proficient in the technology or just trying it out?
- If the new technology does not catch on in the marketplace, will it become orphaned? And perhaps sold, or worse even, mothballed!
- Is the new technology fundamentally different or the same in feature / function? If it is the same, should you really switch? If it is different, is it a complete replacement solution or complementary or just a bolt on?
- If switching requires a significant amount of change, why not look at other options to see if they match up better to what your organization is trying to accomplish?
I am frequently asked to sell Fellowship One as a site-license and let the customer operate the software on its own servers. Operating a web-based transaction system is more than most churches can take on. And more often than not, those churches that have the fortitude to take on such an endeavor are not fully aware of all the costs to do it right. The infrastructure required to secure the network and the talent and expertise required to keep it up and running is expensive. Even for our largest customers, the Fellowship One monthly fee is a fraction of what it would cost a church to operate it themselves.
Grace to you,
jhook