I am one who has been skeptical about Software as a Service (SaaS) from day one. I prefer having my apps and data located where I can put my paws on them whenever and wherever I please. I do use off site backups and Katrina has even got me thinking about adding another tier to my backup strategy for regional disasters. But my operations always have had my stuff together. SaaS is encroaching fast on the enclave I have built up. SaaS is offering software at a significantly lower initial price point than outright purchase of a license. This allows business and consumers to get into using a product without the burden of paying thousands to get that license.

The idea seems sound and for some business models it makes very good sense. For instance, my wife has a business where the major software support, best support is probably more accurate, is sold as a service. This gee whiz system is truly spectacular. There are some quirks but the man developer truly seems interested in ensuring that their clients are getting what they need.

There are also some frustrations. For instance, there isn’t a way to pull data in QuickBooks format from the system. This causes a tedious reentry of data into QuickBooks. But, this isn’t a total duplicate set of data, just enough to ensure proper billing and payment for sub-contractors and such.

My issues on why SaaS is not for me happened during the recent holiday season. Early one morning, as she and her staff prepared to do some heavy hitting on client services, the software was unavailable. The site was refusing to receive connections. As a purely database driven site, the ability to receive the connection and then warn the user that maintenance or what not is going on is there. However, nothing of the sort here. A seeming simple refusal to connect.

Being a computer geek (and most of you are too.) We know that sites go down from time to time. My wife on the other hand was ready to burn down the city. An immense amount of schedules and data about clients was unavailable when it was sorely needed. This was it. The world had collapsed into chaos. A business without data of the type this one has simply cant function without it. Luckily, the original paper documents containing the essential data where on file. Yes, in this day of electronic storage systems, SaaS, the Word Juggernaut, and massive hard drives containing huge gigabytes of data, paper saved the day. Which isn’t special since most business still have large amounts of paper data. Which can be bad in it self. Without those paper originals, I have no doubt that today we would be on fire from the fire bombing from angry clients.

This was one of my worst fears of SaaS. That when I needed it most, it wouldn’t be there. Not just from the service provider end, but from me getting to them as well. My internet connection could be down for instance. This outage was purely at the service provider however. This brought home many fears to the paranoid side of my brain. It told me volumes about how this service is running and the architecture of the system. It made me ask the question that I think I know the answer to. “Is this thing running on ONE server?” I think yes. Over one thousand clients, all relying on one solitary server. What are the backup procedures for that server? I am assuming that this was the cause of the outage. I don’t know and as this is supposed to be the merriest day of the year, I won’t find out soon.

This incident has revitalized a dead project of mine. Build our own system for her business. Doesn’t need the complexity of the SaaS one yet. Just get the main framework and primary modules done. This one will surely integrate with QuickBooks. And being modular (did I mention I love modular?) it will be adaptable and easier to maintain and upgrade. Also, since I try hard to write all my code as object. The base system shouldn’t be too hard getting it functional.

The only problem that this project has is time. I don’t have a lot of it! This may wind up being a team effort here at Spear Networks. Who knows. What I do know that is my first foray into SaaS hasn’t been all it could have been. And with proper system designs and setup would have been. But one good thing came out of this…. I have a new prospect to cater too.

Edit

After speaking with the developer in depth, I believe we may have tentatively forged a new business relationship. He is interested in some of my ideas and I may be able to help get that ship going a little straighter.