8 Myths of Software-as-a-Service 169
abb_road writes "BusinessWeek looks at the current state of software-as-a-service, arguing that the model is well established and is distinct from failed ASP/Hosting models of the dot-com era. Far from a passing fad, the model is starting to see large-scale adoption, and traditional vendors are having trouble revamping their applications and financials to get in on the action. From the article, 'As SaaS gains mainstream acceptance, it is becoming an important disruptive force in the software industry. And as long as the quality and reliability of SaaS solutions continues to improve, the appeal of SaaS isn't going to go away.'"
there are already disservices. (Score:4, Funny)
Re:there are already disservices. (Score:2)
Re:there are already disservices. (Score:2)
Oh goody! More buzzwords! (Score:5, Funny)
(wait for it)
(keep waiting)
the INTERNET!
Are you impressed yet? It's very Web 2.0, I'm sure. Some of them might even use AJAX and Social Networking and Portal Technology and Peer to Peer Business to Customer relationships and
Re:Oh goody! More buzzwords! (Score:3, Informative)
But in the consumer market, ebay has been making it's auction software (blackthorne) a service for the longest time now, where it gets rented for 25 bucks a month (ever since they bought out the company who originally made it). Not too painful monthly, especially if your (smal
Re:Oh goody! More buzzwords! (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Oh goody! More buzzwords! (Score:3)
Re:Oh goody! More buzzwords! (Score:2)
Re:Oh goody! More buzzwords! (Score:2)
Re:Oh goody! More buzzwords! (Score:3, Funny)
"Today's economic and competitive pressures make nearly any form of outsourcing fair game."
"Many companies now consider various IT functions and business applications commodities and not core competencies."
In trying to explain the new-wave of software rental services It further notes that:
"Companies of
Re:Oh goody! More buzzwords! (Score:2)
Even though they mention ASP (probably to get their buzzword quota), the "concept" has nothing to do with ASP. Back when VAN companies charged your company money to move EDI data, they were providing a third party service. What the article is saying is that a service like this would be "special" because it used (wait for it) the INTERNET!
Personally, I'm not impressed. The Internet has made communicatio
Re:Oh goody! More buzzwords! (Score:2)
I'm not completely clear on the concept of VAN companies. Could you explain them a bit more using an internet analogy?
Re:Oh goody! More buzzwords! (Score:2)
VAN stands for Vehicular Anywhere Network. Because DARPA's Sneakernet didn't scale well for WAN configurations (offsite backups could take days and several wheelbarrows), pre-internet network developers came up with VAN. VAN's advantages were that it used the pre-existing transportation infrastructure (or 4WD vehicles when none was available), and piggy backed on the existing applicable state and federal vehicular code as a protocol. It's disadvantages were that it was difficult
Re:Oh goody! More buzzwords! (Score:2)
Personally, I have an idea about combining a bookstore and
or taking by brother's auction buisness and putting it on.... (wait for it) the INTERNET.
Still even better yet, I think I could work something out with my cousin the mail man to transfer messages on
I could go on, but I catually agree with the parent, I'm just being a jerk.
Doubletalk (Score:5, Insightful)
Why can't they just say "it's the same thing, but the business climate is more ready for it now?"
Re:Doubletalk (Score:4, Interesting)
1. The business climate is different
2. The ASPs tried to host apps that hadn't really been designed to run over the Net. The new generation is using apps that have been specifically been written with that in mind.
I'm not sure I believe the hype, but at least get the author's points right.
Re:Oh goody! More buzzwords! (Score:5, Insightful)
Basically they mean to say that businesses are becoming more and more open to externalizing anything that is not the core part of the business.* So, a company selling cooking grills no longer has an employee or department who handles email. They simply contacted 'Turnkey Enterprise e-Solutions Ltd.' and had them handle everything about email for the cost of $5 per address**, per month. After all, this company is in the grill business (core competency) not in the email business. Why worry about maintaining a server, or setting up users, or doing backups, or handling spam? The executive just wants to make better grills and sell them to more people.
So, let's say something like that (email) is proposed. Let's say our grill company (GrillCo) needs about 400 email accounts. Since they are not buying email servers or hiring spam gurus, there's no large initial investment for them. They can test it out with one department (accounting) and if the ten people there like it, they can expand to doing everyone's email that way. It eliminates risk for the buyer.
Now, is this a better way to go? The truth is anyone that will provide a definitive answer either way is off their rocker. It may work for some things, it may not work for others.
But the reason things like these are discussed, and possibly becoming more and more popular, is simple; for better or for worse, cost-cutting is being highly rewarded at the executive level. If you run a publicly-traded company and do not appear to be "cost oriented" then you raise suspicions among boards, shareholders and Wall Street.^ There's a whole crop of companies whose only goal is to cut costs for their clients (for example, ICG Commerce [icgcommerce.com]). Of course, sometimes these pressures come other sources [fastcompany.com].
So, by performing a buzzword-ectomy on the above, we result with something like this, "It has become fashionable to look at costs above other parts of a company's overall performance. Software-as-a-Service can sometimes help cut costs, so it is being considered more widely as an option."
Unfortunately for the tech crowd, it has less to do with AJAX and new whiz-bang applications and more to do with the business side (shudder) of things.
* Whether or not this is true I don't know, but that's what they are proposing.
** I'm picking a number out of thin air.
^ I'm not saying it's good, that's just largely how it is.
Re:Oh goody! More buzzwords! (Score:2)
Part of the problem with SaaS and outsourcing generally is that "the core part of the business" has no intrinsic meaning, and soon comes to mean, "those activities that result in the greatest direct profits." On this model, "the core part of the business" is in all cases nothing more than sales and marketing--everything else is a support activity for those fundament
mod up (Score:3, Funny)
Give a man a fish, he'll eat for a day
Teach him how to fish; he'll eat forever
Sell him fishing-as-a-service, and pretty much his entire physiological development is subject to the vagaries of *your busines model, because he wanted to concentrate on his core competencies
Bingo (Score:2)
Re:Oh goody! More buzzwords! (Score:3, Interesting)
You know, BMW buys a lot of parts they just put together. But they're still doing a pretty good job selling cars.
I'll take it a step further. Boeing. They outsource a lot of manufacturing. A hell of a lot. But what they don't outsource is the key part (the core) of the business. In Boeing's case, it's the wing. And you know what? Nobody was really concerned until Boeing outsourced the wing [buffalo.edu]. Building a PC
Re:Oh goody! More buzzwords! (Score:2, Interesting)
I work for a company that offers SAAS in the finance industry and I'd like to give you a different perspective on this matter.
What you say is not wrong. However, you sound like cost-cutting is the unique benefit/motivation of ASP/SAAS. It is important to note that focusing on the core competency is, in and of itself, a big advantage.
Imagine a CEO of mid-sized company, strugling to take his company to the next level, having to spend his time with the head of IT because of the various issues
Re:Oh goody! More buzzwords! (Score:2)
I work in a place that depends on about 5 big apps...What I'd give for some kind of liscensing that would allow us to keep current without having to pay huge migration costs. That would be software-as-a-service...This is just not powerful enough to meet our needs.
so let me get this straight.... (Score:2, Funny)
You mean if quality and reliability continue to improve that you appeal will continue to grow???
Why didn't someone let me in on this secret a long time ago!
Re:so let me get this straight.... (Score:2, Funny)
Awesome! I AM a hunk!
Software is software, service is service (Score:3, Insightful)
Most all software EULAs say, "No Warranty" in terms of being good, doing what it says, or whatever. That is not a service, that is software, "Use at your own risk".
Service includes maintenance releases, updates, support, installation help, onsite repairs, telephone support, etc.
If I don't pay for software, odds are I can still use the software, but my service is going to be minimal at best. If I don't pay for service, it would take a real philanthropist to provide service to me.
Re:Software is software, service is service (Score:3, Informative)
And yet it happens all the time in the open source world . . .
Re:Software is software, service is service (Score:2)
True. I thought that when I wrote it, and expected a comment like this.
I find that mailinglists and wiki's and 3rd party "support" much superior to paid for support. Call Apple, "Why is my brand new PowerBook kernel panicking when I change network locations?" Apple guy: "We have no knowledge of such an issue." Minutes later or osxforums or some other 3rd party site, the headline was "Bug and workaround in OS X version x.y regarding kernel pan
Re:Software is software, service is service (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Software is software, service is service (Score:2)
with smaller projects this comes from the developers themselves with larger projects it tends to come from other users (which can lead to blind leading the blind type problems) but virtually any sucessfull OSS project will have some sort of freely availible support.
Re:Software is software, service is service (Score:2)
Again, software is a product, a service is a service.
My electricity is a service. OS X is a product.
For OS X to work properly, I need electricity. I find it affordable, reliable, and simple to use the electrical service provider in my area. Sure, I could use wind, my cats, or a gas generator, but the electric company does pretty good for me today. If I no longer want the service, they will gladly turn it off at any given time.
OS X is mine. I don't care what the EULA says, or what Apple says. Until the
What a stupid clueless article ... (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:What a stupid clueless article ... (Score:3, Funny)
That's right (Score:2)
Re:What a stupid clueless article ... (Score:2)
-matthew
Re:What a stupid clueless article ... (Score:2)
If I'm not mistaken, my bank (Wells Fargo) has their tellers using what looks to me to be a web page in IE coming from a remote site. Similarly, I've worked for a couple of clients in the past that have provided hosted software applications for
Re:What a stupid clueless article ... (Score:2)
HTTP as a 3270 datastream for framebuffers; web services as CICS transactions, hidden modified fields and all; all apps and data on remote servers. It's all coming back around.
Re:What a stupid clueless article ... (Score:2)
Got it... I will notify Vanity Fair immediately.
Its older (Score:2)
For example a few small banks might all use the same service centre and the proved software, but just load their own data. The user model would be load disk for B
Re:Its older (Score:2)
SAP CEO's take (Score:4, Insightful)
"We have not changed our strategy. We have this mixed environment and run a hybrid model. We do it for good reason. Our customers want flexibility, so, over time, they can make the decision to source us in, or upscale the functionality and integrate us into the back end.
You can do this on-demand for certain areas and certain functions, but not for everything. Everybody starts with salesforce automation because it makes sense since it's not very structured. It's simple and more office-like. But the more you come from this type (of system) to the core of CRM (customer relationship management), the more difficult it will become to do it on-demand. People don't want to share the data with others."
Software as a service is a good idea... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Software as a service is a good idea... (Score:2)
-matthew
Re:Software as a service is a good idea... (Score:2)
Re:Software as a service is a good idea... (Score:2)
What happens to the service and software as a service if the company goes out of business, raises the prices beyond value, or stops offering said service?
If I have an app that works with MSDOS 2.3, I'm free to install and use MSDOS 2.3 with no service or any kind of support available or necessary.
If MSDOS 2.3 were a service, and my software was incompatible with any other OS version, what would I do?
Re:Software as a service is a good idea... (Score:2)
A silly question (Score:2)
Do they? One thing not mentioned in either TFA or your post is what does a customer do if the service is no longer meeting their needs? This industry has historically been about vendor tie-in. And about companies constantly ignoring what their customers want; and telling the customer what they will get once they are locked in.
The obvious example for slashdot is Microsoft; but I can think of so many others tha
Re:Software as a service has already failed (Score:2)
And every single one of those models are being replaced by the current model of selling services and giving out software(aka linux,freebsd's,Solaris, etc)
Selling or leasing software will fail for every large business will then be 100% depenadant upon some other company to let them
How does it fit in with this article? (Score:3, Interesting)
Which seems to imply at least some backlash and return to 'on premise' models of software.
This press relase brought to you by Salesforce.com (Score:5, Interesting)
First off, it isn't cheap--Salesforce.com is $65 per month, per seat and it has to be paid 3 months in advance. This makes it quite a bit more expensive for small businesses than say Goldmine or ACT. Secondly, the reliability was horrible. CRM is the lifeblood of any organization. *Any* downtime results in all of your customer facing people (sales team, customer support staff, billing, etc) basically sitting around on their hands. Sales leads were lost and customers were pissed off. The worst part about it is that we couldn't do anything about it. I couldn't reboot a server, rebuild table indexes, sacrifice an intern... nothing. I wasn't told what the problem was when the system came back up, nor was I even notified *when* they came back online. And I wasn't given an apology or a service credit.
After several very public blackeyes Salesforce finally released a systems status page. In a pure act of corporate hubris they named it http://trust.salesforce.com/ [salesforce.com]. You know know something's deeply wrong when a simple status screen is given that hard of a PR spin. Sorry, but they already blew my trust. I don't care what BusinessWeek says, I wholeheartly recommend that an organization keep their key systems in-house!
Nice report (Score:3, Interesting)
Ah, the dreaded "software issue" problem. Maybe they should contact AOL; it might be related to their recent software glitch [slashdot.org] incident.
Actually (Score:2)
Re:Actually (Score:2)
Re:This press relase brought to you by Salesforce. (Score:2)
Re:This press relase brought to you by Salesforce. (Score:2)
Re:This press relase brought to you by Salesforce. (Score:4, Interesting)
1) The open-source tool is cheaper. MUCH cheaper, as in $0.00 vs around $12,000 per year.
2) The open-source tool is not as good as Salesforce, but it does everything we need.
3) The open-source tool runs on our internal network, so it's faster and more reliable than Salesforce.
4) Although Salesforce has a pretty decent API for developing custom apps, nothing beats having the source.
5) Our data is OUR DATA, and we don't want lock-in.
Re:This press relase brought to you by Salesforce. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:This press relase brought to you by Salesforce. (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:This press relase brought to you by Salesforce. (Score:2)
of system administration required once it's set up is very small. I'd say that SugarCRM is going to cost us (a small company of 10 people) under $4,000 to set up, and probably under $1,000 per year to run. All of the costs are sysadmin time.
Re:This press relase brought to you by Salesforce. (Score:4, Interesting)
We deployed it at 3.5.1 (about six months ago) and it has improved significantly since then. Overall I guess it's OK but still has a way to go, particularly on the documentation front. Reliability has been good in a kinda "we haven't lost any data" fashion. Performance is shoddy, but we're running it on a fairly slow box. Quicker than Salesforce though. The source is a bit scary and while there is a SOAP API the documentation (again) is shite.
BTW, you can export from Salesforce in any one of a dozen ways so I wouldn't get tense about that.
Sugar themselves are a bit weird. It took a while to be able to buy support queries ($95 a pop or $295 for five, IIRC), the organisation being set up a bit *too* focussed on upselling to Sugar pro or whatever it's called. They seem to be an organisation that learns, however, and hopefully people like me ringing up and trying to give them money for support queries will change their tune fairly quickly.
With any luck it turns into a big OSS success story.
Dave
Fluff the Magic Dragon... (Score:4, Funny)
Marketing nonsense (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Marketing nonsense (Score:2)
Amen. Someone give the parent some Mod points.
Re:Marketing nonsense (Score:2)
Re:Marketing nonsense (Score:2)
Vendor Lock-In in the worst way... (Score:5, Insightful)
Now that all our data is in the system and we are running our operations off of their system we are pretty much screwed...they can jump the price at any point and we just have to pay it. The sales people lie (no surprises there) about having ways to export your data, but there aren't any really there.
Just be sure before you jump into something like this that you have a way to get your data back AND get it in writing that said tools will always remain and be current.
(and, yes, since we bought into their system they have moved to only allowing Internet Explorer....D'oh!)
Re:Vendor Lock-In in the worst way... (Score:2)
That was the one time in the last 12 years I did not choose to use TaxCut or TurboTax and boy do I regret it.
Re:Vendor Lock-In in the worst way... (Score:2)
Maybe I'm a bit biased against this since I perceive the reduction by companies of IT staff as a direct threat, but like it's been said before elsewhere in this comments section, SaaS works better for some setups and worse for
AYBABTU (Score:3, Funny)
Re:AYBABTU (Score:2)
The article should have addressed this issue (Score:2)
Maybe salesforce.com and their ilk have fine escrow agreements in effect but the article was incomplete for not mentioning how the problem gets handled.
What is the goal? (Score:3, Insightful)
The office-app replacements are the proverbial "cure for which there is no disease". There is little reason that a composition program needs the network to function better, and certainly not enough reason to justify the hurdles involved in presenting these programs online. For something like tax-prep, it makes perfect sense to offer a "use" payment plan. The software is, by its nature, only ever used once a year, and the functionality needed (basic fill-in) is no real stretch for the Web. Something like customer-management is a task that is there to benefit the outside world, so having it tied into the network is an obvious choice. Something like internal project-management software depends more upon internal communication, but with the widespread connectedness of the Web, it makes sense to use the already-existing network to present the function, and get the peripheral benefit of being to check in on the road.
That said, the article read like a press release.
Re:What is the goal? (Score:2)
Let's see if the outsourcers are smart this time (Score:2, Insightful)
Once upon a time we bought an ERP system. We had the choice of buying our own server hardware and hosting it ourselves, OR we could choose the "service on demand" option. The "on-demand" option was pitched by a fanatic salesman who sent these nifty glossy brochures (via FedEx overnight/signature required, no less). Lots of cost justification charts to explain the
Re:Let's see if the outsourcers are smart this tim (Score:2)
It's called a Contract.
Re:Let's see if the outsourcers are smart this tim (Score:2)
I sure hope by "Contract" you meant "emergency data processing center with all applications and data in a runable state within the day". Otherwise, you're fired.
Business vs. Consumer (Score:2, Interesting)
Market is only going to get bigger. (Score:5, Interesting)
In 10 years' time, I doubt we'll use CDs or DVDs for much. I don't have a CD drive on my current laptop and I have only missed it once since my initial install -- and that was to install an older version of Quickbooks (newer versions are available for download instead of on a CD.) CD-ROM only drives are quickly becoming as obsolete as floppy drives as we move to the Internet for software, music, and movie distribution. As online storage and backup services take over, the idea of backing up to a CD-RW or DVD-RW will also become obsolete. We'll be able to "jack in" anywhere, from any PC/Mac/Internet cafe terminal, authenticate ourselves, and have instant access to all of our data. TurboTax, SalesForce.com and other services like it are just the beginning.
Re:Market is only going to get bigger. (Score:2)
yet another AYBABTU (Score:2)
Useful Metrics (Score:3, Insightful)
My company uses Netsuite as its accounting application. It is a web-based accounting and salesforce automatication suite that does many things well. There are some things that it does not do well, but can be worked around.
Companies like Netsuite and Salesforce may tout 99.99% uptime, but we have often run into scenarios where the service was running too slow to be unusable. Unfortunately, strictly speaking, the system was not experiencing "downtime", thus allowing the vendor to maintain their statistic, even though for us the system was as good as down.
The "lower cost of ownership" claims may not pan out over the long term. The article talks about SaaS being metered by usage levels. Netsuite charges by the named user, and I believe Salesforce still does, as well. The pricing model is similar to "normal" softawre. The TCO measurement depends largely on the size of an organziation, i.e. do they already have the pieces to implment a full-fledged CRM/SFA, (enterprise database, email and storage servers)? If you have these things in place and are used to supporting them, a traditional CRM or accounting package may cost less than an SaaS.
Other metrics that are missing are customer support response time. The unfortunate part of SaaS is that if the system goes down, everybody will call at once, and when you need the vendor the most they will be the most inaccessible. In general, though, I would love to see metrics of quality of customer support not only for SaaS but for regular vendors as well. When you deal with an SaaS, you typically don't have a VAR helping you out, it's you and the vendor directly. If their call center is understaffed or undertrained, it's painful
The article, itself, reads like a press-release and is horribly vague, especially when mentioned the "new 'Live' version of [Microsoft's] Office suite" - which does not implement Word or Excel, and treats on-demand updating of anti-viral software as SaaS. It isn't.
What we've found as a past user of Salesforce.com and current user of Netsuite is that you really need to do the upfront due-dillegence to make sure that these SaaS systems conform to your business model. Netsuite, especially, is awkward to deal with if your company provides services as opposed to sells widgets. Get a strong consultant on the front-end to make sure the product is a fit for your organization, and be prepared to do significant customization. Also, be careful to get specifics on how much it costs to import and export data to other systems. In Netsuite, for example, you have to have certain versions of their system to import/export XML records of your data (their webservice based pricing is, at the moment, still free depending on how much data you move through it). Make sure you have access to your data.
At IBM we called this... (Score:5, Insightful)
Being able to charge a subscription fee for your software and continue to get paid, rather than have to make money by continuing to get unit sales, is the holy grail of any software company.
Microsoft tried to force all their customers to this model without a heck of a lot of success. In my opinion, it's not because they couldn't have had this model, it's just that they tried too late - and found out that once something is "good enough", people simply don't spend the money to "upgrade" to something that's the software equivalent of road bed materials: an OS exists only to permit people to run applications, and once they run, you're done buying OS's.
Frankly, I think the best thing that has happened to Microsoft upgrade sales in a couple of years has been that iTunes doesn't run on Windows 98.
-- Terry
A better model... (Score:2)
What about security, ownership, (ugh) IP, et al (Score:3, Insightful)
First: information security. The customer has a whole new group of people, the SaaS organization, with actual or potential access to the customer's data. How is the customer to evaluate the real security of the SaaS organization? What about the link between the customer and the SaaS facilities?
Second, as the SaaS organization possesses the customer data, who is the actual owner of said data?
Third, can the SaaS withhold the customer data in the case of a disagreement? How quick is a resolution to any disagreement? Can the customer get a satisfactory dispute resolution? What stops the SaaS provider from sitting on a customer's data until the customer buckles?
Fourth, should the SaaS provider have a problem, can the customer data be seized and/or sold as an asset?
Fifth, should there be mis-behavior on the part of an employee of the SaaS provider, can the customer data be seized (intentionally or incidentally on a server)? What happens if an SaaS employee sells customer data?
Sixth, who owns any copyright/patent/trademark. Can the SaaS patent customer data or develop patents from customer data?
These seem to be rather daunting problems. Specifying answers in contracts is good, but resolving problems through contracts are slow and expensive. The customer is in a particularly vulnerable position, while the SaaS provider is in the catbird seat.
Re:What about security, ownership, (ugh) IP, et al (Score:2)
Q1: Even your OWN employees could steal and sell your data. But, if they do it via devices and logins, at LEAST you can get an audit trail on demand and quietly without tipping off anyone that you suspect malfeasance of some kind. One point for on-premise, 0 for SaaS.
Q2. You and ONLY YOU own the data, provided it's original content, and you didn't steal, commingle, crib or cobble and simply repackage the work of others' legitimate
Read article, and still with some hubris can say.. (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Read article, and still with some hubris can sa (Score:2)
His last name wasn't "housewares". he worked in housewares.
Fail-Fast (Score:4, Informative)
Thus the true innovation is that Software as Service allows you to holve wasted time on failed software rollout, and since time is money it literally pays for itself!
3-Tier Architecture (Score:2, Interesting)
I believe what's needed, and may even be a good idea for a start-up, is DaaS or Data as a Service. Your data is securely (I hope) stored and backed up thro
i'm not sure but.. (Score:3, Informative)
Lets say my company requires a customer relationship managememtn software. Among my options would be to buy a pre-deveoped, customizable software SoftwareA for whatever amount of money.
Now the problem is I'll have to set it up, set the whole damn environment up. Servers, backups, networks, databases, user accounts, etc etc. Now i miht be able to get the guys who sell me this to set it up initially at probably a huge amount of money. Then ill have to get them to train my IT guys, who'll probably need documentation and baic training programmes, and some kind of structure ot account for employee rolloffs and new recruits etc etc..So thats a huge IT maintenance budget, with a whole lot of maintenance and training overhead.
So instead the guys who make SoftwareA says, you pay us rent, we have this SaaS version of SoftwareA. You and your team can access everything using browser over the internet. We take care of installation 9its htis side, you wont even know it) and support. Here's our site, here are your login IDs, Here's our support number. Usr access policy sould be through a easy to use GUI, or in complicated cases through a authenticated request from authorised users to support. We have guys who's expert at htis sotware and were here 24/7 coz we have lots of customer who need the same thing. Our overhead is shared, and we have a lot of advatage in terms of training and maintenance.
All you need is a reliable net connection. besides your travelling employees could access it anywhere.
Ofcourse net connection gone = boom. and its a big risk for critical software. But reliabilty of the net is increasing and this will be critical, reliabilty of the SaaS companies would hopefully improve. if you can have redundancy (dialup to their data center? local backup systems would prboably defeat the purpose
looks like it could work, esp in SMEs...
Long time example (Score:4, Interesting)
Every one of these application that I have had to deal with has been very difficult to use. My theory is that they sell the application to one of the bosses based on the way the reports look. They make the user interface for the reports work well. That helps two people per company and saves their time. The people who enter time get the short end of the stick and 200 people waste their time and energy trying to enter hours.
I mean
The first one I had to use only worked right if you used the "right" screen resolution. You were supposed to change your screen resolution to run their application. And, if you didn't, the windows would be too small. They wouldn't scroll. They wouldn't resize. And you couldn't see the OK button at the bottom.
Another one, two years later, would lose everything you entered if you tried to print it at the wrong time.
The one I am using now (in 2006 after 5 years of these sinister felons) makes you go through 5 screen clicks to add more than 40 hours. If you go in to enter your hours after 6 pm on Friday it will default to next week. The first time I didn't know it and entered and submitted all my hours on the wrong week.
I think the it shows the real problem with the business model. There is no incentive to improve the time usage for the people that do the work. The word comes down from on high because the sales doesn't have to convince more than a few people that use the application. This makes the choice of such software a burden on the company's bottom line because, by choosing it, they waste their employee's time.
time is money
Obligatory Paul Graham reference (Score:2)
This is not an Article - it's an add. (Score:2)
Wether SaaS or not, soon it will make no difference. People will be able to choose between having their OSS solution of choice set up on their own hardware in their own shop or an OSS solution set up on the servers of their favourite IT service company.
Preping customer hardware with software or running it for them on your own servers is not that much of a difference anyway. Not nowada
Dear mods: (Score:2)
Although JustNiz may have grossly oversimplified the concept of SaaS, the idea still applies. Why would anyone pay over and over and over just to leave their data at the mercy of a third party?
If Blizzard goes under, your WoW character ceases to exist, tough cookies but no real loss. If
Re:Dear mods: (Score:2)
Surprisingly even in this enlightened forum, it seems evident that some moderators think "not supporting the status quo" == troll.
Re:Crap. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Crap. (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:What about getting to the data? (Score:2)
Then you are not the best customer for these types of systems. These services are marketed towards the company that doesn't have a tech as part of their permanent staff. They're not going to be able to export data from a MySQL database and perform a mail-merge, and are definately not going to want to swap databases for if the curr
Re:What about getting to the data? (Score:2)
and if the vendor decides there is no need to provide good service because the customer is already locked in?
Re:What about getting to the data? (Score:2)