The battle of "software" vs. services is definitely heating up as "software" companies try to figure out how to reconcile an inefficient business/innovation model with a future that will be about value driven services.
SaaS has a lot of attributes in its favor, pricing, flexibility, openness, and perhaps the most important, is speed to effectiveness for workers. Anyone that has subscribed to a service can describe the immediacy of the return on the investment, no waiting 6 months to get it deployed and then 2 more years for the technology to become cost effective.
Traditional on-premise software has too many barriers to ROI. The developer model has changed from selling productivity to selling the next version. Software buyers purchase one version then, while waiting 4 or 5 years for the next version, end up paying for the privilege of upgrading to the forthcoming product every 2 years.
With SaaS, innovation is on-going and continuous. SaaS proves its worth through innovation every day. Customers want to see their technology investment continuously help them drive business innovation, rather than wait to innovate on 5 year cycles. For that reason SaaS has to be continuously adapting, enabling our customers to be nimble, efficient, and driving market changes.
Maybe we should stop calling them software companies and start calling them insurance companies?
Colin Smith, Dir. Corporate Communications, WebEx
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