On episode 45 of the Bill Kutik Radio show, Bill Kutik interviewed Jason Averbook and Jason Corsello regarding the HR year past and coming up. During the show the topic turned technical and Bill Kutik brought up the topic of whether SaaS will become the dominant delivery method for HR applications. In answering the question, Jason Averbook discussed the myth that you do not need IT help when implementing SaaS application. Spot on commentary by Jason until he says:
Software as a Service requires just as much IT support as any of these other solutions. It’s a different kind of IT support, a different skill set.
Sorry Jason but I am going to have to disagree with you on this point. SaaS applications do not require as much IT support as on-premise solutions. Let take a look at the typical IT tasks for supporting on premise vendor application and note the tasks that are also needed for SaaS applications:
| IT Task (performed by customer) | On Premise | SaaS |
| Perform capacity planning for new servers in company datacenter to host on premise software | X | |
| Purchase and install servers in Datacenter (install operating system, power, networking, monitoring, fail over, disaster recovery, security) | X | |
| Install application on servers | X | |
| Install database software, load database and manage ongoing database needs (space, performance) | X | |
| Customize application per business processes | X | |
| Create inbound and outbound interfaces | X | X |
| Apply application Tax updates, New features and patches | X | |
| Apply technology upgrade and patches | X | |
| Test tax update, new features and patches | X | X |
| Work with IT Change Management organization to implement changes into Production | X |
My experience with SaaS applications show that you no longer need IT Datacenter support, Database Administration support, Application Infrastructure support and Application Development support (with the exception of interfaces). Poof. Gone. No longer needed. Depending on the number of resources either partially or fully engaged to support your on-premise application, this could be a sizable reduction in the resources needed as you shift to SaaS.
Agree? Disagree? Leave a comment and let me know.
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