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Topic: SaaS
Some posts from RagingBull on SaaS.
http://ragingbull.quote.com/mboard/boards.cgi?board=VCSY&read=181632
By: Sliver_Fox
14 Apr 2007, 12:27 PM EDT
Msg. 181632 of 181648
(This msg. is a reply to 181631 by POSCASHFLOW.)
POS, good news . . . bad news . . .
The good news with Saas is that your software remains up to date. The bad news is that your software remains up to date. Thus, businesses will not be able to control the software they use. While an "older" version of the software may work for a particular application; there is no guarantee that the new version will.
IMHO, this will not be a major problem, but the law of unintended consequences come into play. Thus, when updating a program, great care will have to be taken so that a particular usage in the past will still remain a usage now.
While the IT VP may not feel this a problem, it could. I do not know any top management people who like to have a division or group screaming at them "What have you done to us". Whether anything was done . . . or not. A convenient excuse. A "reason" for failure to execute.
Interesting future we have here.
(Voluntary Disclosure: Position- Long; ST Rating- Buy; LT Rating- Buy)
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http://ragingbull.quote.com/mboard/boards.cgi?board=VCSY&read=181636
By: mm-buster
14 Apr 2007, 02:19 PM EDT
Msg. 181636 of 181648
(This msg. is a reply to 181632 by Sliver_Fox.)
'The good news with Saas is that your software remains up to date. The bad news is that your software remains up to date. Thus, businesses will not be able to control the software they use. While an "older" version of the software may work for a particular application; there is no guarantee that the new version will.' - Sliver-Fox 181632 14 Apr 2007, 12:27 PM EDT
(Sliver demonstrates either a profound lack of understanding as to the capabilities inherent in web-based applications and 'hosting' web services or he demonstrates a deftly deceptive hand in that he is talking to the general population of potential buyers in VCSY who have no technical knowledge whatsoever. Fortunately for them, one does not need much technical knowledge in assessing SaaS concepts. It simply needs common sense and a view that software can be provided to users as a tool; not as an object to be cared for and pampered but to be used and altered as the work requirements advance or digress. Try THAT with CD-Based general purpose applications.
Sliver is speaking in terms of hosted on-demand software offerings where a company [such as Microsoft and CDC] would be offering things like MSWord as a stand alone application provided over the internet from an on-demand hosting center. First get this straight. SaaS requires on-demand architecture as a prerequisite to even attempting SaaS. Microsoft's delay in implementing SaaS and CDC's apparent failure to successfully pull of SaaS demonstrates the falicy of a software producer constructing an SaaS system
A true SaaS system is going to be an integrated business structure offered over the internet [VPN and ultra-highspeed] with all applications like Microsoft's and even CDC's home-grown versions of CRM and HR and whatever other vertical they might want to 'represent' buried under layers of abstraction. The SaaS user never sees the 'application'. The on-demand user is stuck with as SliverFux rightfully testifies.
I would agree with what the poster says if you buy or rent or help yourself to SaaS services provided by some of the software houses because they are not going to know your business and they will only be able to give you a resonable facsimile of your kind of business. You will have to doubtless hire developers to tailor and finish the job of customizing it for you. True SaaS allows the user to cusomize the way the 'application' works. Microsoft is forced to folow that track of 'general purpose' construction even though the SaaS model as envisioned by SiteFlash allows for every user to have exactly what that user needs or wants within the boundaries of the entire SaaS library content for that particular set of methods along with the standards and governance related.
See the difference between somebody like VCSY who can field a technology that virtualizes everything: even virtualizes the back-office [BO] third-party [3P] commercial-off-the-shelf [COTS]. In other words, a shrink wrapped application or a 'use-our-product' on-demand distribution channel is not where you want to lay your precious darling web 2.0 business baby down to sleep. Yuck. As Frank would protest 'You had me sleeping in urine?'.
So remember, Microsoft nor any general purpose application builder or provider doesn't know what you use your software for and you may need an entirely different userset of capabilities than 99% of the rest of the 'CD package' software use. In the case of buyng a one-size-fits-all application, you are stuck with doing it the way everybody else does it. That's good in keeping a standardized business or society. But as the old Soviet principles and 5 year plans demonstrate, it all gets to look the same and pretty damn drab at that.
And don't be a standout! If you are among the 1% working with that part of a 'general purpose' designed application, you will be a part of a very exclusive testing base. Then you would have to contact technical support for every item to be 'fixed' [patched more like it if you're using a general purpose] and hooboy what's that going to take?
With SaaS the baby knows how to walk and play football when you press the go button. Not so with the kind of applications and services Sliver is representing.)
(Voluntary Disclosure: Position- Long; ST Rating- Strong Buy; LT Rating- Strong Buy)
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http://ragingbull.quote.com/mboard/boards.cgi?board=VCSY&read=181637
By: mm-buster
14 Apr 2007, 02:20 PM EDT
Msg. 181637 of 181648
(This msg. is a reply to 181636 by mm-buster.)
And another quote from that post:
'While the IT VP may not feel this a problem, it could. I do not know any top management people who like to have a division or group screaming at them "What have you done to us". Whether anything was done . . . or not. A convenient excuse. A "reason" for failure to execute. '
(Another excellent reason for going SaaS because you don't interface with ANY technical people That's what's so funny about the other side's argument against something like SaaS. They're being forced out of the IT closet. Forced out of the IT office. Forced out of the IT Department by an army of integrators, maintenance technicians and specialist nobody will ever have to see much less talk to or interact with.
Again, this lack of understanding apparently derives from the poster having no understanding of what SaaS means. He is from an on-demand [very old school like selecting tv programs with the remote]. With SaaS you have convergent capabilities tied in already with the third party applications [which are now in a mad scramble to include convergent technology] trying hard to remain relevant in a world where users are going to dictate what gets provided and used.
In Sliver's world each company is responsible for their own IT highs and lows. They eat the filet they gotta eat the crow and scabs as well. In the SaaS world a much larger and much more user-oriented technology base is at the user's fingertips where a single complaint brings a single remedy that propagates throughout the SaaS base immediately rather than being developed and maintained in one place having to be bombarded with the same question a million individual times.
No offense to Sliver - we all have limits on our knowledge and experience - but I would discount any advice Sliver is giving on this subject).
(Voluntary Disclosure: Position- Long; ST Rating- Strong Buy; LT Rating- Strong Buy)
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http://ragingbull.quote.com/mboard/boards.cgi?board=VCSY&read=181638
By: mm-buster
14 Apr 2007, 02:21 PM EDT
Msg. 181638 of 181648
(This msg. is a reply to 181637 by mm-buster.)
In other words...
something like Microsoft Word would best be broken up into different sets of tools and offered across the web at varying rates for various capabilities. Least for more basic word-processing duties like formatting and templating. More for more advanced duties like Graphics and presentations.
Microsoft won't be able to even attempt that until Viridian and apparently Viridian is coing out around the same time as Apple's Leopard operating system - around October I think. I say this has to do with a fiscal year policy changeover in both businesses just given the month selected to release the software to the public.
The question I would like to have Sliver answer is why he thinks CDC and Microsoft are so far behind in this technology. And what do they do now?
(Voluntary Disclosure: Position- Long; ST Rating- Strong Buy; LT Rating- Strong Buy)
