The End Of Software - Anibal's Blog

The battle of SaaS vs. Premised-Based Software is just beginning. About TCO, I remember a decade ago, Microsoft was showing numbers about how convenient was to buy all software from them. Now, the SaaS marketing is based on several advantages of this model:

Capital savings: Software and Hardware IT operations savings Departmental / Business operations savings Additional areas in a complete TCO / ROI model These advantages are inherent of the OnDemand paradigm. However, each SaaS vendor will fix a price, as HIGH as possible, according to the target market. So, the previous theoretical advantages are not so obvious, and must be evaluated case by case.

For example, a small business has several options: they can install a small premised-based CRM, an open source CRM (like SugarCRM), choose the on-line Zoho CRM (free for 3 users), or try the top of the SaaS CRM industry (Salesforce). Which is the best TCO / ROI model for this customer ?

Also, the current Premised-Based software industry is going to fight lowering the prices. We can expect lower front payments, and better long-term deals from traditional players.

Again, in each situation, a complete scenario must be analyzed. In this article from Daniel Druker, Cloud / SaaS Total Cost of Ownership Framework, I have found a good starting point to a complete analysis.

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