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Think about it.  Low upfront cost.   Monthly expense.  You are not in control, the stuff belongs to someone else.  You worry about being too dependent on a particular vendor.  You worry about losing things and the consequences to the bottom line.  Over the long term, you realize that it might be more expensive to keep doing this.  Hmm, sounds like leasing.  

Leasing is an option we understand well.  Our companies have used it during a period of change and needed  the flexibility of disposing of hardware easily.  Or, the technology desired was going to change soon and leasing made it possible to stop buying so that when warranties on previously purchased hardware ended, a major technology change could be rolled out.  Purchasing could then begin again. 

Is SaaS going to be “leasing” for software?  It has many of the same advantages except for the flexibility.  You either move an application to an SaaS model or you don’t.  Partial moves make no sense in this context.  An added advantage is reducing the need for technical staff on hand to keep it up and running as the vendor has to do that.  The use of vendor staff might be a good reason to switch to SaaS for smaller organziations.  For larger enterprises, losing the ability to customize, test and integrate with other systems might not make SaaS a winning choice.  

As usual, we shall see.  Predictions of cloud computing taking the SaaS model even further means that we should prepare for managing assets in these types of environments.  If these characteristics are beguiling during our current economic downturn, then more of us will be managing these types of applications on our assets and in our contracts than not.

SIIA has a webcast coming up in September on the viability of SaaS in a recession if you are interested.

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