Over the last three years we’ve seen the number of start-ups increase at an exponential number which is partially due to the cost of technology products and services decreasing. We’ve also seen more and more companies take to the web and launched SAAS or Software as a Service based business model which offer subscription to customer to utilize the company’s web-based service. No this is not new, for years we’ve heard and used products from companies such as Salesforce.com, Oracle ADP and NetSuite. This space is still growing quarter after quarter Amazon has jumped in with their Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3), and Google brings up Google Apps.
Across Canada there are companies such as FreshBooks, Hot Banana, Sxip and Workbrain to name a few, and the list continues to grow.
The model is great as it allows for a business to focus on what they do best and outsource the parts they are not such as IT to someone else. So it is business as usual right? Until the day that you wake up as I did this morning and see that FeedBurner says you have “0″ subscribers and then you have one of those moments. FeedBurner is a SaaS that provides online publishers tools to manage their subscribers through RSS feeds. If you are a start-up or company who doesn’t want to spend a lot of money on software based services, are they really the best choice? No service is 100% guaranteed all the time, so what do you do when a service that your business has become dependent upon isn’t working? Should you look for a backup to your SaaS? Should you backup the data that a SaaS handles for you with an external source?
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I have been doing some research on SaaS and its future impact. Do check it out Enterprise 3.0 = (SaaS + EE) by Sramana MitraMitra.