Five SaaS myths debunked

The Myths Hold True for Small Companies

this article would seem to talk companies out of going for SaaS solutions, since some of the major benefits have been proven to be myths. but although, from a sweeping perspective, the assessment is accurate, but from a smaller business perspective the myths are in fact "true". in our case, we are a small law firm and use SaaS application <a href="http://www.hyperoffice.com">HyperOffice</a> for our collaboration and productivity needs, and i will elaborate how some of these myths arent myths at all when seen from our view point. 1) SaaS saves money - it does save money, especially if youre a small company. the implementation of some systems like Exchange is just not financially possible (also considering the cost of hiring IT personnel). a SaaS based application breaks down the costs into monthly installments which is at least within reach financially. gartner has also not considered the cost of opt-out. If circumstances changes, and the company has to change an owned software, it still has to bear the costs. with saas, you simply stop paying the rent, and no sunk costs will accrue to you. 2) faster to deploy - it took us just a day to get started with our collaboration platform with HyperOffice, which included intranet and extranet workspaces, document management, forums, permissions management, contact management, webmail and Outlook synchronization etc. as gartner says, deployment is faster only for basic systems. the fact is, most smaller companies need only basic systems. 3)SaaS is utility computing - it IS utility computing in a sense. you can plan costs according to planned usage. although the costs arent exactly proportionate to every minute the solution is used or not used, but you can plan the number of users expect to use the solution, space usage etc, and pay accordingly, and upgrade later if needed. with purchased software, you are always bearing the costs of underutilized capacity. 4) integration is difficult - we use HyperOffice to synch and share our Outlook accounts, as well as collaborate with MS Office files, and also manage online files from our desktop using the "web folders" concept. so a basic level of integration, the kind that most smaller companies need, is easy. 5)SaaS is best for basic systems - i would not know about advanced systems. but in our case, and for most smaller companies, basic systems are the most pressing requirement.

By Ip_pankajunk218b on Sunday Mar 8