Next time someone tries to demo you their SaaS/On-Demand application, make sure they do so in a web browser.
I know it sounds silly, but I have seen more than a few “On-Demand” applications that were most definitely on-premise. This demoware is usually by client/server proprietary companies trying to kluge a 10-year old app into a web site and have yet to figure out that it does not work that way.
SugarCRM got into the SaaS game early. It was a lot easier for us because we were not burdened by legacy architecture. We built all our products natively for the web. So even if your company runs Sugar On-Site, users and admins access it from a browser.
SaaS is important. It comprises a large portion of our customer base and is growing fast. But so is the rest of our business. It is entertaining to watch Silicon Valley get breathless about On-Demand. It is the part of the natural hype cycle out here and it has a purpose – it allocates capital to start-ups focused on the space, gets the attention of employees who go and work for these firms, and educates prospects about the benefits of the model. But it can be overdone.
Declaring the end of on-site software due to SaaS is akin to saying people will no longer go to the movies because of DVDs. Hypesters fail to recognize that these two different form factors meet two different needs and can coexist and actually grow the market.
Sugar’s founders, in their wisdom, saw through the hype early and built of solutions to work On-Demand and On-Site. That way, Sugar capitalizes on the $300M+ a certain company spends marketing On-Demand while benefiting the massive replacement cycles of Siebel/PeopleSoft/JD Edwards/Oracle On-Premise that take place about every seven years. For those of you keeping track, the last CRM replacement cycle took place around Y2K.
