You’re right – data migration is a significant barrier in enterprise situations, presenting an often unanticipated (or at least under-appreciated) barrier to entry for replacements.

Your comment that ‘facilitated collaboration’ makes the barrier higher for SaaS solutions is really intriguing. While not being an extra barrier implicit in SaaS, it is a barrier implicit in “enlightened applications” that encourage, leverage, and glean value from collaboration. And I agree with you that newer applications tend to focus on collaboration more – and that server-side applications tend to enable collaboration more effectively. Nothing prevents peer-2-peer communication (Microsoft Groove comes to mind) except mindset.

Further, SaaS companies, by focusing on customer retention (versus acquisition), will find those “low hanging fruit” opportunities. It is easier to incorporate collaborative capabilities into an existing application, especially when you get the agility benefits of the SaaS development / business model. So I agree with you that the market forces will tend to drive things in this direction too.

Thanks again!

Ten years ago, when I was working in the enterprise software space (on sales / sales engineering applications), we had many discussions about desktop versus server solutions. Our clients were compelled economically to develop server-side solutions (cost of deploying changes, cost of multi-platform development, business agility – delays of rolling out changes / updates).

Users had inconsistent access to sufficiently useful network connections (speed and availability) such that user adoption / value to end users, practically speaking, mandated disconnected, thick client applications. Our clients were caught in the middle. Some paid the price of distributed solutions, others adapted their sales processes and engagement models to the constraints of online-only applications. A couple tried to do both.

Ultimately, for almost all of those customers, the businesses chose a third solution (this change happened over about 10 years). The solution they chose was to change their business model to no longer “need” the benefits our products provided, thus removing the justification for the costs.

It would be really interesting to engage those same customers again in an environment of ubiquitous internet (well, much more so, anyway).

We weren’t providing solutions as SaaS at that time (we did try, in some cases, but we did not offer a compelling price/model/value, so it never succeeded). The “customer to user” model at that time, however, had much of the same dynamics (thick versus thin client).

Thanks again!

The more successful an SaaS solution has been in penetrating an organization, the less practical a “flip the big switch” migration becomes. By that I mean migrating all data and users during the same “offline” timeframe, say overnight or over a weekend. The probable outcome of a such mass migration tends to be disrupted user productivity, flooded Help Desks, and lynch mobs roaming the corridors looking for whatever idiot planned that transition. So generally a managed approach is taken, with users being migrated in small enough chunks (e.g. teams, groups or departments) such that Training and Support can deal with any issues in a timely fashion.

A plan to migrate away from an SaaS solution tends to pose additional challenges, however, given that one of SaaS’ prime virtues is improved collaboration. Once teams/groups/departments have gotten used to sharing key information on a (near) real-time basis, what happens when they’re being migrated to a new solution at different times? The old and new solutions become separate data silos, and users can only share with other users on the same side of the migration wave. Given continued data activity in both silos, the affected business processes become disconnected.

So to keep from breaking the collaboration model, with SaaS it’s typically no longer sufficient just to maintain both the old and new systems for the duration of the migration. That organization would also have to be committed to accomplishing the ongoing bidirectional data migration needed to let all teams/groups/departments continue to stay in sync during the transition, regardless of which solution they’re using. That of course tends to represent a much bigger task, cost and headache than just a one-time, unidirectional data migration.

So in a practical exercise, I think that business process planning will typically show that the away-from-an-SaaS-solution migration barriers are higher than they may appear at first glance.

Once we get over this hump and make technology make businesses more efficient with use of technology we get to true innovative solutions. We have developed a process and framework that builds trust, collaboration, synergies, and well analyzed solutions for both sides of the table and everyone is contributing, but it still comes down to the Business Analyst to live in both worlds and be the gas to keep the innovation train moving. And not everyone can do it. Coupling Analytics with Creativity Right and Left Brain firing on all cylinders is truly an art form. The Processes, Deliverables, Facilitation, Documentation and Management of this information is the hard skill that can be taught. The other stuff you can learn it, but you have to have the passionate to take many shades of grey and clearly concisely management to deliver software…..install or SaaS. I would have to say SaaS offers up more of the house already built, but the creativity for your business is where you truly see competitive advantage. Plus I see so many of the SaaS bells and whistles bolt-on’s having huge a leg up on the installed path. Plus business people love demo’ing it in a sandbox with SaaS gives the collaboration and synergies between the businesses and IT a huge advantage.

History repeats itself mainframe or client server argument….client server or SaaS…….seems scary similar in nature. Uuuumm how did that play out for the IMS’s and the AS/400’s of the world?