Salesforce OS

Lawson's CEO, Harry Debes, doesn't believe in software-as-a-service (SaaS).

In fact, the ERP (enterprise resource planning) software company's top executive has put a two-year expiry date on SaaS' head.

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Q: All the other big players are going "on demand". Is cloud computing the next big thing?
Debes: This "on demand", SaaS phenomenon is something I've lived through three times in my career now. The first time, it was called "service bureaus". The second time, it was "application service providers", and now it's called SaaS.

But it's pretty much the same thing. And my prediction is that it'll go the same way as the other two have gone--nowhere.

SaaS is not God's gift to the software industry or customer community. The hype is based on one company in the software industry having modest success. Salesforce.com just has average to below-average profitability.

People will realize the hype about SaaS companies has been overblown within the next two years.

An industry has to have more than just one poster child to overhaul the system. One day Salesforce.com will not deliver its growth projections, and its stock price will tumble in a big hurry. Then, the rest of the [SaaS] industry will collapse.

Read more here...

• Human Capitalist
• Appirio's Founder Ryan Nichols picks the interview apart.
  
• Vinnie Mirchandani is amused.
  
• Bob Warfield is not.
• Sarah Lacy questions the thesis.
• The Sky is Falling

Human Capitalist says

While I would agree profitability has been difficult to achieve for most SaaS vendors (Salesforce.com, Taleo and Concur are the only one’s that come to mind), the reason is actually good for customers….because these companies continue to focus on rapid innovation and are continuing to re-invest into their products frequently and creating new products at the same time.

Appirio says

The reality is that Salesforce.com, with 94% of its customers saying they'd refer the company to a colleague, has much higher than average customer retention. 74% of its customers say they have already done so. These figures are twice what most on-premise software vendors are seeing. SaaS solutions tend to be good because they have to be, to keep customers. On premise software can afford to treat customers as addicts - at least for the short-term, until the customers kick the habit for good.