Comments on: The Argument Against Software as a Service

By: saas commentator

saas commentator — Fri, 23 Jan 2009 13:49:43 +0000

Anyone interested in saas should check out the following forum thread, in which serious security flaws in the Sage Groups Sagelive Saas software is discussed. Security problems Sage Group Sagelive software as a service

By: superuser2

superuser2 — Thu, 11 Dec 2008 22:23:07 +0000

Why does everyone seem to think their own organization is better at retaining data than an outside one? A company that does software as a service and only that will do it well.

Hiring a programmer to write a program to translate data from one export program to another is a lot cheaper than hiring programmers to build the whole thing from scratch.

By: psyche

psyche — Thu, 11 Dec 2008 14:10:18 +0000

In my experience of selling cyn.in (http://cyn.in -SaaS and virtual appliance offering), before investing in a software, enterprises get complete understanding of what is being provided to them in the support and the exit options, before buying. Besides, if its a mission critical software, companies just don't invest in any software. they need a lot of credibility. Also, with the economic downturn and budgets cut down, I think companies will move more towards deploying and using cheaper software options including SaaS and open source.

By: Ken D

Ken D — Thu, 11 Dec 2008 12:25:54 +0000

Josh, I was asking the same question to my IT team when they first implemented Open Source version of cyn.in for group collaboration requirement. It was easily adopted by rest of the users and since data security is more important than saving few bucks, we purchased the enterprise license and hosted the software on our own server. So it also about the available delivery model of the product.

By: technostation

technostation — Wed, 10 Dec 2008 23:36:32 +0000

Typically, the applications are deployed by a third party that hosts, manages, updates software based services and solutions and distributes to clients from a central location. XML and HTML processes allow the clients to interact with the software.

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Tue, 09 Dec 2008 19:20:21 +0000

I doubt that any of the “biggies” such as Google will do it, but as a small company, we routinely put our code into escrow so that in the event we fail, our customers have an alternative, however unpleasant. That relieves much of the concern that our customers will be left with absolutely nothing. We also stipulate that they own their data so there is no wrangling over that, either.

Dorsey

By: Jasen

Jasen — Tue, 09 Dec 2008 05:21:48 +0000

It depends on whose hype you have been listening to. I think the appropriate target would be to have a mix of privately located services with some cloud services that operate off of that data. For large scale businesses, I can’t see them ever relinquishing the data due to security and corporate regulations. I.e. I don’t see Bank of America storing their customer accounts and offering real-time transaction services outside of highly secure data centers…

By: dawgbone

dawgbone — Mon, 08 Dec 2008 15:19:46 +0000

That’s why I’ve never understood all this talk about cloud computing.

Why would you risk leaving all your data out there where it’s potentially out of your control?

By: boen_robot

boen_robot — Mon, 08 Dec 2008 13:05:38 +0000

@lo_fye
Is there anyone else that stores their data in the same plain text format as TaskPaper? Is their format an open standard that can be “plugged into” any other app that uses the same standard?

If your asnwer is “no”, then your bakup is just as good as any other backup. You have your data, but it’s next to impossible to edit it or sort it out. In the case of a To Do list, this may not be a big deal (as there isn’t much data – worse case scenario is that you find, copy&paste your data into the new app), but data from any other more complicated app would essentially become useless (as there’s far more data and metadata – worse case scenario is the same, only this time you’re doing far more searching).

The same goes for 37Signals. Is their apps’ XML format a standard RDF vocablulary or at least a standard XML format, or is it proprietary (XML != standard XML vocablulary)? Is there anyone else that uses the same XML format on their app?

Again, yes, when backups are stored this way, there is the “potential” that someone can write aprogram to parse it, but who will bother creating a convertor for every legacy format? Even if someone bothers to create “a” convertor, how can you be certain up front that will conver YOUR app’s format?

Scenario – you register at X, X and Y have a bakup feature. Both X and Y die, and Z is born. Because Y was more popular at the end, Z only creates a convertor for Y. You’re screwed. An even more likely scenario is that there won’t even be a Y convertor, meaning you’re screwed either way.

Open standard or not, there still must be support for it – If CSS3 selectors were not implemented in any browser, they wouldn’t ever be used by web devs. Same deal – if a standard isn’t implemented (assuming such exists to begin with), it’s useless to consumers and they won’t use it or demand from SaaS vendors to support it.

By: From-TR

From-TR — Sun, 07 Dec 2008 20:40:57 +0000

DEREGULATED MARKET Backups, SLA's, other special contracts will be reducing the risks obviously however I already don't believe SaaS is more risky than inhouse systems. These guys are really spending time and resource on how they can improve their systems. Nobody can say that SaaS is less effective or less secure. Be sure you need to choose your supplier wisely. Maybe there are currently lots of risky SaaS providers which are too custom and with no compliance without standards, but there are also good examples like Salesforce.com and Google. Microsoft, Oracle and SAP are also working on this. This means basic platform requirements will always be there. If we speak about specific stuff then there is always a risk of services disappearing. I see that the future of SaaS or cloud computing is a deregulated marketplace. Currently you can switch to another telecom supllier without changing the phone number or you can change your electricity provider whenever you want. This model will be possible for all SaaS services also. I think that's why Salesforce.com separated their services and called it PaaS (Platform As A Service) last year. Our CRM and SaaS Blog (Sorry most of the articles are not in English).