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Half-SaaSed

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I’ve seen many ASP’s marketing their service as SaaS without making the necessary enhancements to their service.  I’m prompted to complain a bit about half-assed SaaS, or Half SaaSed (ASP’s doing less than the bare minimum to provide SaaS, yet relabeling their offering as such).  Giving credit where it’s due, I heard the phase half-assed SaaS from new friend of mine, Amanda Malone.  Amanda runs client services for a firm striving for true SaaS and as far as I can tell is equally as dismayed at some of the ASP offerings doing very little to extend value to true SaaS. 

Part of the confusion comes from some analysts who have written papers defining SaaS (most with differing definitions).  Including one I read recently that defined SaaS as any hosted software provided by a software company (as opposed to a third-party).  Give me a break!  A SaaS application needs the following attributes in order to provide the extended value (beyond ASP) that users are asking for:

  1. Network Accessible (consumable over the network, without installing additional software).
  2. Multitenant (shared software and computing across multiple consumers
  3. Automated (provisioning, procurement, setup).
  4. Extensibility (meta services repository enabling customization, mashup and composite functionality).
  5. Simple pricing (subscription bundling and abstracting hosting, hardware, software into a single recurring or usage-based price).

Far too many ASP, merely slap the SaaS label on their marketing and they think they’re done.  The danger with that is the market will eventually see right through that, because there’s no additional value to the customer (Half-SaaSed).  If true SaaS is provided, the market will recognize the benefits.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, September 17th, 2008 at 9:51 pm and is filed under Software, Trends. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

One Response to “Half-SaaSed”

  1. Scott Allen Says:
    December 2nd, 2008 at 11:28 am

    Darren,

    I am a Senior Consultant SunGard Alt Investments. I work primarily with Investran. We now offer ASP and I have clients growing into this new model and looking at the challenges it brings everyday.

    The blog was great and really struck a cord with Half ass Saased as I consider what we offer and what can be improved.

    I live in Ambler, PA and rarely visit corp headquarters as I am usually in New York or travelling. But would love to hear more and just chat about how some of our other offerings are fairing with Saas and improving. I will be at the Philadelphia holiday party so maybe that would be an opportunity.

    Cheers,
    Scott

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