Despite this dark analysis, let me go back to my first sentence. "SaaS is a wonderful choice for a business manager." It is. And, should these tough times ever pass, it will be a god-send choice to launch new business initiatives and to quickly gain competitive advantage in an expanding market. Until those days come, however, it will be used in large measure to avoid spending money, which, during a recession is an added burden weighing down our economy.My general feeling on this topic is - SaaS is great:
- As anyone in the IT world knows, most IT projects fail. And it's not just a small percentage that do, this article has it at 68%.
- One reason most projects fail is that there is a HORRID communication problem between technology and business. It's not that the IT people know better, nor that the business side does. It's simply that the two sides simply do not know how to talk to each other.
- No one likes failure - and everyone involved with it goes home depressed dealing with it all
- There really are grunt level IT jobs, the 'IT Crowd' show does hit home
- If you can't compete you can't win - and if someone else can provide a product faster and cheaper to market they should use it
- Did not realize that companies exist to provide employment, believe the ability to employ comes from having products that consumers want.
Be strategic on the IT side and add value and you and your company survive. Do not and you've two options:
- Your company will realize it can get work done elsewhere faster and will choose to
- Your company will not realize how to get work done anywhere and it will fail
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1 comment:
I make my living running a company that provides SaaS, so obviously I think SaaS is a good thing. I might add two comments:
1. Many companies are too small to have an effective IT staff. Their IT folks are good at "keeping the lights on" but not so good at analysis, software architecture, and project management. When they do try their hand at development, they end up building a lot of things from scratch that a vendor would already have built and proven many dev cycles ago.
2. On the converse, large companies tend to be so large that they can't get anything done. Responsibilities are so diffuse that accountability and resource allocation are major impediments.
Unless your company is in the technology business, IT should be treated just like the legal department. You have an in-house staff for the day-to-day things and you contract out to a specialist for important initiatives.
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