I have been thinking about writing something about SaaS and its organizational on boarding. I can provide some key insight into SaaS and it’s on boarding into organization. A SaaS organizational adoption cannot be seen in isolation but in a broad sense with Strategy, Process, Operation and Technology. I am putting technology last as consumarization and utility model is critical for SaaS. Changes in technology innovation and adoption and customer expectations keep service providers in need of continual change which has helped SaaS providers specially in not so matured business processes to take advantage from SaaS implementation:
1) Strategy : I am of opinion that SaaS will not be a key tool of choice for business areas or domain well matured and have best practice Cots application around. The model works really well in the business domain where the level of maturity is not high. SaaS provide a platform where business can mature to best in industry level in a very short span of time. Which will be much longer if the Cots packages are configured to business needs or a custom application is developed to business needs which is driven from the level of maturity in the organization.
2) Processes: with the constant changing business ecosystem a SaaS solution provides a ready to use solution but the processes has to be built around the tool processes. If the organizational processes are not agile enough then SaaS is not a solution for business problem and processes. As most of the SaaS solutions are multi-tenant environments the processes are flexible to an extent supported by tool but beyond that it’s all about organizational changes.
Also organization has to deal with the high level of expectations from SaaS or Cloud as generally referred. The greater adoption of SaaS models and its tangible benefits of an easier and faster deployment across the business, forces service providers to have a wide range of SaaS solutions and to make those available to customers in a fast and easy way (It wouldn't be very good if the order process takes more time than the technical delivery of the service, as long as aligned with the provider process model).
All these new delivery methods create higher expectations for service providers. They need to deliver services fast and efficiently, with limited administration overhead.
3) Operations: SaaS or Cloud as generic comment provide operations flexibility to have a short ramp up time on new install and run. Though there are cases where operation tries to go overboard in terms of expectations not everything which a Cots or Custom developed solution can do will be done by a Saas solution. This gives an opportunity to operations to look into redundant operations Although it will take a while to overcome all the (sometimes perceived) issues around SaaS cloud services, such as security, reliability, governance, etc,
4) Technology: is the biggest benefited from SaaS. As no physical hosting internall it takes away all overheads from application hosting to monitoring to patching to upgrades. These though take away part of job for technical DBA/Administrator/operations but they always have a whole stack to maintain and integration maintenance becomes important. I have been able to sell reduction in job content by up skilling in security , audit , data compliance etc to IT teams.
The competitive landscape if also changing driving more utility like usage of IT infrastructure and avoiding upfront investment on technology which is key in current economic climate but have to be aware of higher license fees compared to cots.
In summary there are benefits of moving to SaaS as long as benefits are clearly articulated to business.
Apart from these there are few key aspects of SaaS which is becoming real.
A) IT Utility Model/Consumerisation is here: People is using technology at home more often than ever before, and it doesn't look likely that this trend will change, in the near future at least. And using the same flexible technology at the office seems to be a reasonable expectation to have. With Amazon and service providers putting shops for utility models the age of utility model or Consumerisation is here. Though it will start with support tools moving into business tools in near future
B) SaaS/Cloud delivery creates high expectations: The greater adoption of SaaS models and its tangible benefits of an easier and faster deployment across the business, forces service providers to have a wide range of SaaS solutions and to make those available to customers in a fast and easy way (It wouldn't be very good if the order process takes more time than the technical delivery of the service).
C) PaaS and Iaas is here: PaaS/IaaS also enables organisations to rapidly deploy IT environments for specific applications, be that during testing & development or also more often used in production environments. Colt technology ( www.colt.net) provide services to business across Europe in this space. All these new delivery methods create a higher expectations for service providers. They need to deliver services fast and efficiently, with limited administration overhead.
D) Perception and real barriers: Although it will take a while to overcome all the (sometimes perceived) issues around cloud services, such as security, reliability, governance, etc, the adoption of Cloud services will increase dramatically in the next few years. Long lead-times for hosting services is over and on-demand is in.
E) Competitor landscape is evolving: While service providers will continue to consider their usual suspects in their competition landscape, customers have a wider choice from "boutique" service providers that deliver specific solutions. Two years ago, a Telco delivering hosting services would not have considered Amazon as a competitor. Now, it's not only Amazon but many other organisations that are able to provide relatively low cost Cloud services to any-size customer.
F) Differentiation: NOW Professional and Customer Service is a differentiator. In the past, customers had mainly a choice of building and managing their own infrastructure, or buy a managed service from service providers. Now, customers find it easier to buy infrastructure and manage it themselves. Now they need to have
a. Positive culture
b. Flexibility
c. Technology investment
d. Cost control
e. Customer focus
G) Business solution maturity: As business SaaS service provider many of which were just an outside organization customer specific hosting is giving way to true SaaS services standardization and industry best practices will be key for success in future.
I would like to invite readers to contribute to my thoughts to share and learn.
RegardsAshish
No comments:
Post a Comment