by Michael Krupa on September 5, 2010
I read the tweets coming from the Workday Technology Summit on August 23 and was surprised. A couple of the analysts seemed to suggest that Workday should stop talking about its SaaS Multi-Tenant technology approach and focus instead on the business value of the Workday application when they are talking to customers. While that might be good advice for Workday, I hope the analysts are not advising customers who are looking to purchase SaaS solutions to focus only on the functionality of the application and not worry about the technology. Potential customers should absolutely dig into all the nooks and crannies of a vendor’s technology.
Vendors are not to be trusted especially when it comes to HR data. If you are a customer thinking of using a SaaS vendor for HCM/TM applications (especially core HR) you had better make sure that the Vendor is using technology that is proven and fully supportable. Sometime after go-live when the SaaS application experiences an outage or data breach is not the time to discover the vendor’s servers are running Windows Server 2000 or the database is Oracle 8i or the “servers” are a rack of Psystar towers. You might get compensated for the downtime but at that point you probably have lost confidence in the vendor.
Customers need to fully understand the technology used to power the SaaS application. Purchasing HR applications/software should always be a joint venture between HR and IT. HR can focus on functionality and usability and IT can focus on technology and security.
by Michael Krupa on April 20, 2010
Guess what? The rumor on the street is that HR leads the industry in using the Software As A Service (SaaS) delivery model. Surveys say that customers still prefer best-of-breed solutions over integrated solutions so that means more HR applications instead of less. Guess what also is true about many of these SaaS applications? They still use flat files as the main vehicle to shuttle information into and out of the application. In this model the customer is still required to develop an interface to the SaaS vendor. Wait, what? As a customer you still have to do custom development even though you are using a SaaS application.
There are several other more state of the art options such as an Enterprise Service Bus (ESB) or SOAP messaging. I don’t know about you but when an employee gets hired into my core HR system, I would love to have the employee information zip over to my SaaS based Learning Management System within a couple seconds instead of sometime that evening when the flat file interface gets run. When I push the button to fill a requisition in my recruiting application, wouldn’t it be great to have the new hire in my core HR system right away. Sorry SaaS Recruiting vendor, sending me XML files via FTP multiple times a day doesn’t count.
All is not lost fortunately. The HR SaaS application vendors are starting to incorporate messaging or ESBs into their offering. The most prominent example of this is Workday purchasing ESB vendor Cape Clear back in February of 2008. Since then Workday has embedded Cape Clear into their application to allow end users to create their own real-time inbound and outbound interfaces.
For those other SaaS vendors who are still stuck in the flat file interface, you better get it together soon. We are wising up and will be requiring state of the art real-time interfaces in our vendor selection criteria.
by Michael Krupa on March 17, 2010
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.
