More "disruption of disruption"
I recently wrote that the rate of disruption was accelerating not just around mature, "utility" technology areas but in newer, innovation tech areas such telepresence and mobile devices.
Add SaaS to that. Earlier in week salesforce.com and Google announced a partnership around their SaaS CRM and office productivity applications.
2 days later Zoho announces its own enterprise version of CRM, to go along with their own office productivity suite.
Their disruption - pricing at $ 25 a user a month.
And as I have written before Zoho is a company which is unbelievably productive in its development and one which spends way more in R&D than in marketing. That is certainly a disruption in the software industry.
I agree with you on Zoho bringing disrpution to the SaaS disruption. I believe that Indian and Chineses and other similar 'outsourcing' nations have an opportunity to disrupt the economics of SaaS by delivering SaaS solutions more profitably than their US counterparts. It will be interesting to watch how this plays out in the near future.
Posted by: Subhash Nair | April 22, 2008 at 03:20 PM
Vinny
Here's the thing you're missing with SaaS disruption. It doesn't matter how cheap Zoho/SFDC or anyone of the now-dead browser era makes their Saas offering. They could pay you to have your employees use it, and it would still be too expensive.
If you're paying people all day long to use an app, it's got to be a lot better than anything a browser can do. Check it out:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UOnF6FQYH1g
Gregg Dourgarian
CEO, Tempworks Software
Posted by: gregg dourgarian | April 26, 2008 at 11:48 AM
Gregg, I take your point...but few SaaS apps are heads down all day type apps...very fee employees work with Office like tools all day, few SFA users are just banging in data...given that why not pay much lower than a comparable on-premise solution
Posted by: vinnie mirchandani | April 26, 2008 at 12:07 PM
tx Vinnie and i do respect and appreciate the feedback, but the browser is no longer the ideal small-footprint appf or 9-5 users. With one-click installs and WPF, the game has changed.
you prompt "why not pay much lower than a comparable on-premise solution?"
I don't agree with the premise a SaaS vendor charges less...that's a commonly help assumption, but it's just not the reality of the marketplace.Obviously i have self-interest here, but the CFOs out there are catching on to the fact that by the time the sales people add on the different services they need to make their SFA app work, they are out serious money.
Posted by: gregg dourgarian | May 01, 2008 at 07:30 PM
Gregg, compare against the TCO I wrote about here ...SaaS is quantum less expensive
http://dealarchitect.typepad.com/deal_architect/2005/10/killing_the_goi.html
Posted by: vinnie mirchandani | May 01, 2008 at 09:22 PM