From the monthly archives:

January 2009

SaaS Disillusionment is your own making

by Michael Krupa on January 13, 2009

While on Twitter the other day, one of my favorite HR twitter users, Jason Averbook, posted a link to an article on the InformationWeek blog about the SAP CEO, Bill McDermott, predicting SaaS Disillusionment.

From the InformationWeek article:

Meantime, McDermott says SAP is positioned to gain share in the business applications market as IT departments scrutinize every dollar spent, while predicting that SaaS vendors will have a tough time living up to the high expectations that customers will place on them. SaaS implementations, he says, are “harder, more expensive, and riskier” than businesses anticipated, and he predicts a backlash as “disillusionment sets in.”

I think disillusionment comes when either SaaS vendors or SaaS customers don’t think through what they are doing. Software vendors rush out a SaaS offering without really architecting their software for true Multi-Tenancy delivery. Customers rush out and sign a contract with a SaaS Vendor thinking they will save money without actually determining if the vendor is offering their software services in a true SaaS Multi-Tenancy model. Months later everyone is unhappy and disillusionment sets in.

My understanding is that SAP did not architect their SaaS offering such that SAP and their customers would be happy with the service. Taking an existing ERP application and architecting for SaaS delivery is hard work and maybe even impossible to do. It is probably easer for SAP to sow the seeds of discontent regarding SaaS to protect their current ERP investment.

Potential SaaS customers need to involve both the business and IT groups to make sure the vendors they are evaluating are offering a SaaS model that fits their needs. This model might be ASP/Hosting, Single Tenancy or Multi-Tenancy SaaS. Each model has their strengths and weaknesses. Too often however the Business owner decides on a SaaS vendor based only on the functionality of the application and does not bring in IT resources to evaluate the actual SaaS model used by the vendor.

If you are a vendor or a customer disillusioned with SaaS, maybe you need to look within to determine if your disillusionment is of your own making.

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Do you use Gmail?

by Michael Krupa on January 11, 2009

Then I would like to remind you of some often overlooked features.

Keyboard Shortcuts
You will need to turn these on via Settings > General Tab > Keyboard Shortcuts. Then you can hit the “?” key to see all the shortcuts that are available. My favorites are the “j” and “k” key to move up and down your list of emails (VI editor anyone) and then you can just hit the “Enter” key to display the message you want to read. Once in an email, you can hit “#” to delete the email or hit “g” then “i” to go back to the inbox. It will seem a bit strange at first to navigate via the keyboard instead of a mouse but if you get a lot of Gmail, reading and deleting via the keyboard shortcuts will save you a lot of time.

Themes
Tired of the same old look and feel of Gmail? You can now specify a Theme to spice up your experience via Settings > Themes tab. Some of the themes such as Beach will even change throughout the day as the Sun rises and sets. If you are a Google Apps user and have your domain email hosted by Google then unfortunately the Themes tab will not be available. Strange but true.

Video Chat
You can now do a Video Chat (think Skype) to another Gmail user. You will need to download a browser plugin and then you are all set to chat with another Gmail user without having to leave Gmail. More complete information on this feature can be found here.

Gmail Labs
Are you the experimental type of person? Gmail Labs are little tweaks and shortcuts for Gmail that are still being worked on by Google and may or may not be eventually incorporated as a standard feature:

Gmail engineers come up with new ideas all the time. Gmail Labs is our place to try them out and get your feedback. None of these features are really ready for prime time yet, so they may change, break or disappear at any time

Click on Settings and the Labs tab and you will see a wealth of fun features to try out. If you turn on any Labs features you will see a beaker icon just to the right of you Gmail name on the upper right hand side. Sorry Google Apps domain users, no Labs tweaks for you.

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