Recently, Nand Mulchandani, co-founder of ScaleXtreme and its CEO, remarked that “we believe there’s a large enough number of people out there that are comfortable with SaaS.”
With that thought firmly in mind, Nand went on to say that “I’ll probably eat my words, but we have no intention of ever offering an on-premise version.”
But while many companies like ScaleXtreme hold a similar attitude – why deal with compatibility and resource issues on-premise when SaaS options are available – enterprises are increasingly demanding software that is compatible at a local level. Opscode, a ScaleXtreme competitor, recently launched an on-premise companion piece of software to its Hosted Chef choice, because of demands from enterprise customers.
While SaaS offers a number of immediate and oblivious benefits over simple VPS options, it is still facing problems in the IT market. The first comes from IT techs themselves, who are increasingly finding their jobs in jeopardy as SaaS and other hosted solutions make their way into the mainstream. This, in combination with the fact that problems now have to be dealt with through email and messages to the host provider, makes many companies nervous about the speed of response they will receive.
Other concerns revolve around the possibility that an Internet outage will render a SaaS option useless, and leave a company with no way to do business. Internet connections themselves are not the province of hosting providers, and if the Internet fails at a crucial time, there is little a SaaS provider can do about it.
Though SaaS is making a breakthrough in many areas, enterprise users are some of the toughest nuts to crack, and providers are still finding that dual hosted and on-premise solutions tend to provide the best utility.
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