KEY POINTS:
If you've been playing with Web 2.0 applications like the web aggregation tool Netvibes (www.netvibes.com) or mash-ups based on the mapping tool Google Maps (maps.google.com), you know how powerful it is to have different sources of information updating in real-time and accessible through
a simple web browser.
Those things are pretty useful for your personal digital life, but imagine how powerful it would be if all the applications you use in your working life are also delivered via the browser - chunky, complicated systems like customer relationship management, accounting and billing.
That's what software-as-a-service (SAAS) is all about, and while there's been plenty of hype about this re-invented method of software delivery, there's also a body of evidence emerging to suggest SAAS is the way of the future for a wide range of software applications.
I just spent the day at the Software as a Service Summit (www.brightstar.co.nz) held at the Stamford Plaza in Auckland where a few local examples of SAAS implementations were showcased. Particularly interesting was a presentation by Steve Buikhuizen of Salesforce.com, the CRM company that's pioneered the SAAS model. Growing at a rate of 70 - 80 per cent a year, Salesforce.com is using the SAAS model to implement CRM across several thousand seats in an organisation in the space of six - eight weeks. That's the beauty of the model, it doesn't require any dedicated infrastructure as the service is hosted remotely and delivered via the internet.
Wellington-based Xero (www.xero.com), which is currently seeking interest in a planned $15 - $18 million sharemarket float, is applying the same model to small and medium-sized businesses for accounting software. Alastair Grigg, the company's chief operating officer gave an interesting demo of how Xero works and said its number one advantage is the collaboration it allows among people inside and outside of the business. You could, said Grigg, give your bank manager or a silent partner a log into Xero so they have total visibility into the business. All anyone needs to access Xero is a web browser.
Other examples put forward by the likes of Fronde, Right Now, Xero rival MYOB and Vodafone, show there's plenty going on locally in the SAAS space. Still, there are pros and cons
(www.channelregister.co.uk) to SAAS which isn't suitable for all applications. Businesses are still getting their heads around the fact that their data may not be hosted with the business, but with a third party supplier. That has serious implications. And while SAAS should work out cheaper to implement and manage, SAAS is up against highly-comoditised desktop software packages that are well-entrenched.
But SAAS has a clear and obvious role to play in businesses large and small and as Fronde's Steven Graham suggested, SAAS, to also give New Zealand companies the chance to export their intellectual property to an international audience and overcome the yranny of distance. The world after all, is just a web browser and fibre optic cable away.
