SaaS or SALSA?

SaaS or SALSA?

I think the IT industry, more than most other industries, may be with the exception of Wall st., is FAD driven. Take a look at SaaS. According to analysts (I do not consider myself to be one) this is the best thing to happen since sliced bread. It has the following benefits

1. Reduces Time to Market
2. A snap to Deploy
3. No Infrastructure to Manage
4. No License to Manage
5. Pay-as-you-go subscription model
6. Why pay for all the custom features when you do not really use it e.g. SAP

Sounds great so far. So whats the problem here?

Lets start with why anyone uses software or IT to start with. I think, there are two reasons:

1. It is the cost of doing business, the price of entry if I may
2. It is used for gaining business advantage

Let's say SaaS is adopted as widely as predicted, i.e. every mom-and-pop has CRM and whatever else that is available, that would be like everyone in business using Word, Excel and Email. It just becomes the cost of doing business. You cannot use hand-written notes or slow mail anymore. Historically same things happened with the Typewriter, the Electronic typewriter, the Fax machine, Photocopier etc. SaaS is no different. So what?


No Doubt SaaS offers the above stated benefits, but, there are certain issues that could inhibit its adoption beyond a certain segment. So what is the inhibiting factor? It is not customization or performance or accessibility or scalability.

Let me put it another way. Think of SaaS as a being equivalent to a Power plant. Instead of all of us running our own generators, we get electricity from a centrally located power plant. We have created a Grid based distribution system to increase the reliability. In spite of all this we have blackouts. Then, I'm sorry to say this, power plants become terrorist targets. If we all had our own power plants i.e. little generators this would not be an issue, but we loose efficiency.

So what do we do? We use Generators or Flashlights as backups to the Power grid. Depending on the criticality of the application i.e. if it is a surgical facility in a hospital or if it is a data center running mission critical applications we have UPS systems. So what is the relation to SaaS and what does that have to do with SALSA?


SALSA is an acronym that I just created. Just like that! Software As a Local Service Appliance. There are two purposes or implementation possibilities for this concept. It is easier to explain and understand this using an example. So here it is:

1. Salesforce.com application as an Appliance i.e. Salesforce SALSA
2. Salesforce.com Appliance backup to Salesforce.com SaaS i.e. Salesforce SaaS with SALSA high availability or Salesforce.com CONDOM (Common Domain - suggesting that it is one application but with local availability protection)

Why would you do this beyond the above stated reasons i.e. UPS backup, Local Power Generator analogy.

As good as oats is for ones health, we need to package it, add sugar and honey and make it enticing for people to consume, hence we have Cheerios. The benefits of a concept/product alone is not enough. Packaging brings wider acceptance and adoption i.e. revenue and profitability. In the case of SaaS there are corporate cultural barriers to cross. Many Medium and Large Enterprises care about control and data security. If data is not in their own sight or under their clear oversight they are not going to want to implement it. Then there is the issue of backup, restore-on-demand, storage, regulatory requirements, compliance, audit etc. to deal with. Saas may provide all this, but can do it only as much as a Powergrid provides electricity. If we trust a decades old technology like Power Transmission to that extent (Blackouts sure do not make it any easier to trust), there is no way Large and Medium enterprises are going to trust SaaS. SALSA just makes this easier.

The data replication technology is mature enough to support the CONDOM implementation suggested above, if needed. This makes the process of continual update of the software easier. If it is just a plain SALSA implementation, upgrades need to be worked out. The good thing is, if someone does not want to upgrade, they do not have to, making the adoption easier. In the end what is important are the benefits of SaaS as mentioned at the beginning, not where the software physically resides. People buy a product for its benefits. We use public transportation for its benefits, but still like to own a car, unless you are poor or just do not have the need for it (Just like the current SaaS adopters and that is the point)!.

Why not?