SaaS and SMEs

Is there any reason why SMEs show not take SaaS very seriously now at least for applications like email, collaboration and CRM?

SMEs should take SaaS very very seriously, we have had a look at some accounting systems, CRM and of course email as potential SaaS solutions to adopt .. we were impressed.

Some people are still worried about security, performance and service level agreements, but we see that the bigger SaaS players have adequately addressed those.

The other objection is about your and my data sitting half a world away and what happens of we decide to discontinue the SaaS contract etc.. we have had discussions with salesforce.com about that .. we were comfortable with what they said.

As an SME we are excited about SaaS and I believe 2011 will see us move 70% of our applications to the cloud.

There is another consideration that we CIOs should think about before any kind of SaaS steps.

Today you probably have a sufficient number of technical staff to support your operational side, back ups, maintenance, administration, minor upgrades etc.. if you replace some of your applications with SaaS, you will obviously no longer need some of your operations staff, and cutting cost of staff would probably be part of your justification for the move.

Now consider that for one reason or another you need to take these applications back in house again, will you ever be able to get the extra headcount back to support these applications?

In most cases the answer is no. This does bather me .. what are your thoughts?

Undoubtedly the way forward for SMEs.
SaaS vendors need to work on their SLAs, end of contract data migration back, and integration w third part applications.
With that, finally SMEs will no longer be inferior to large companies in terms of automation.
For instance we have had a very good look and salesforce.com and I can't say that it lacks any major functionality traditional CRMs offer, less than $100 per user per months, and you get a world class CRM managed for you!

What other realistic choices are available for SMEs? To set up and manage data centers? To go into lengthy on site ERP and CRM deployment? That is suicide.

SaaS is the way forward for enlightened SMEs .. but make sure you stick with a reputable SaaS provider who has a meaningful SLA, good functionality and reliable support.

SMEs seem to be the first to benefit from SaaS or they are supposed to. In reality, I feel that most SMEs lack the maturity or the leadership when it comes to making such a bold decision.
Time will tell!