When SaaS price increases, the enterprise how to choose cloud computing?

Over the past 10 years, the IT industry has transitioned from the PC era to a cyber-centric era where traditional software and services will become equally important.

According to a recent forecast by well-known analyst firm Gartner, the SaaS market for enterprise-class applications worldwide will surpass 6.4 billion U.S. dollars in 2008, up 27% year-on-year. By 2012, this market will have a capacity of more than 14.8 billion U.S. dollars. In the context of the current economic downturn, the SaaS product is undoubtedly a great attraction for the enterprise. However, whether the enterprise is really suitable for embracing the cloud computing still needs to be evaluated judiciously from the following aspects. 1, hidden costs A big selling point of SaaS is its simple pricing model: pay on demand, pay on a monthly basis. SaaS manufacturers in marketing this point will also play to the extreme. However, Forrester analysts said that although the SaaS pricing model looks simple and inexpensive, when the user selects a different feature and support options, it will then become complicated and opaque. Technical support, provisioning services, feature addition, and capacity expansion are major sources of four additional expenses. In addition, the uneven performance of service level agreements is also a problem that business users and IT staff often complain about. 2. Does IT Have a Vote in Making a Decision? IT does not have a say in a SaaS purchasing decision-making process? It sounds incredible. However, it turns out that most of the decision-making SaaS software procurement business people, and SaaS vendors tend to be clever, a direct contact with business decision makers to promote their products. Because SaaS enables businesses to rapidly deploy solutions with little or no IT involvement, there are potential pitfalls. Due to a lack of involvement of IT, some organizations lack the long-term planning for sourcing SaaS solutions and do not actually assess integration or customization capabilities. Once the application can not support user needs or problems, they will turn to IT for help. To avoid this undesirable cycle, companies should engage with IT as early as possible in the purchasing process to assess whether alternative solutions can effectively support their needs. 3, Saas application is mature enough With the SaaS market continues to grow rapidly, all kinds of emerging companies have mushroomed to emerge, which companies assess the ability to choose a higher demand. Another reason for getting IT involved in the procurement process as soon as possible is also to improve the security and long-term stability of the decisions. Take SaaS ERP software for example. The high complexity of enterprise applications such as ERP makes it difficult for SaaS vendors to provide full functional coverage. According to Gartner, SaaS ERP applications that integrate HR, finance, operations, CRM and supply chain management will still face a number of breakthroughs over the next five years, and SaaS ERP suites will not be the mainstream of large enterprises in the short term select. And standing in the business perspective, "buy and buy" is not so easy to do, the redefinition of business processes, integration point re-planning, infrastructure re-layout, these are the real problems facing the business . Do not forget the total cost of ownership Forrester Research pointed out in a 2007 study that the low total cost of ownership advantage is not the second most important reason why software IT decision makers in North America and Europe do not choose SaaS. Garnter analysts said SaaS ERP, for example, does not have a low total cost of ownership (TCO), even with pre-configured solutions. In the meantime, many SaaS vendors have also made inaccurate estimates of their operating costs. For example, the multitenant architecture required by the SaaS ERP suite will result in huge internal workloads and substantially increase the initial setup and post-maintenance System upgrade costs. 5, integration problems to be considered According to Forrester research, "integration problems" is the primary reason for most companies (66%) to say "no" to SaaS applications. The difficulty of integration problems lies in the choice of SaaS integrators. In a report just released in October of this year, Gartner pointed out that so far there is no single way to meet all (or even most) of the company's needs for SaaS integration, and companies are forced to do multiple-choice questions. In today's marketplace, there are generally four main types of enterprise choices for SaaS integration: SaaS application programming interfaces (APIs) and technologies, third-party vendor SaaS integration technologies, integration as a service (IaaS) solutions, and professional services Institution or system integrator. Depending on the context and context of the different businesses, as well as internal integration skills and the overall B2B strategy, choosing and choosing one or more of the above approaches becomes a matter that is full of variables. The long-term success and value of SaaS application deployments are not as simple as Buy It Now, and behind the hype of "no IT involvement," it still requires the backing of a strong IT team and a solid, persuasive Business use cases.