Disruptive Opportunities To Get SaaS Inside Enterprise

Every new technology would find a preferred way to get inside enterprises. Amy wohl points to the fact that it is traditional for software incumbents to represent new software as an incremental change. Product vendors put much effort into making the transition from one version of the software to the next as smooth as possible. Ease of upgrade and incremental value coming out of the upgrade would be the key determinant in customer’s choice to use the upgrade opportunity. Enterprises generally tend to ignore routine upgrades and may bypass one cycle of upgrade.Substantial upgrades may call for extended period of thinking – customers may evaluate options and may postpone taking a decision pending reasonable evaluation of alternative options. She sees that this is the opportunity for Software as a Service. When incremental upgrades are offered that are sufficiently new or different that they cause the customer to wonder just what the best course might be, there is an opportunity to present an SaaS-based solution - where it is appropriate. Customers are always glad to hear that they will be able to prolong the use of existing hardware, save money, and move expenditures from capital to expense budgets.

My Take: This may be a practical step in a sales cycle – but SaaS was supposed to be an application of different Genre – It should by definition alter the concept of enterprise applications and should be a factor in budgetary planning exercise of customers( upgrade/migration finance are generally decided upfront at this stage itself inside enterprises) – influencing that process is a much better option -The sale has to happen based on adding value to enteprises- meeting expectations and future proofing the enterprise on various options to sale up and step up IT support.It another matter that large enterprises have not be so warmed about the SaaS hype up until now.