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5 Questions to Ask Before You Say Yes to SaaS or Cloud Computing

With the global economy in turmoil, SaaS vendors of all stripes (ERP, CRM, supply chain, BI, you name it) will be pushing their fast-to-implement and less expensive products even harder. But do you know how to look before you leap into the cloud? Consider this five-step checklist.
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Not surprisingly, SaaS vendors have decided there's no time like the present to make a full court sales press. In a down economy with slashed IT budgets, when there's no tolerance for 18-month software implementations and the price tags of on-premise software from Oracle and maintenance fees for SAP applications are not falling, software-as-a-service and cloud computing offerings become more attractive options for businesses.

Marc Benioff, the CEO of SaaS CRM vendor Salesforce.com, recently explained just why his flavor of the cloud computing model was best suited for today's troubled economic times. Forget big contracts with Microsoft, Oracle or SAP, and get beyond outdated hardware and software solutions, Benioff told CNBC in early October. Benioff said that Salesforce.com's "pay-as-you-go, elastic model" offers clients much more flexibility.

Recent predictions on the SaaS market appear to bolster Benioff's optimism. Gartner noted that worldwide SaaS revenue in the enterprise application markets was on pace to surpass US$6.4 billion in 2008, which is a 27 percent increase from 2007 revenue of US$5.1 billion. By 2012, Gartner predicted, the market is expected to reach US$14.8 billion.

But while there are elements of truth to Benioff's contentions and sound reasons that bolster Gartner's numbers, there is also a thicket of issues that those companies who rush into the cloud will soon discover. Here are five important considerations that business leaders and IT staffers must think about before they sign a SaaS contract.

1. Have You Prevented Against "Sticker Shock" Down the Road?

One of SaaS's biggest selling points is its simplified pricing model: those pay-as-you-go, per-user monthly fees. The term "flat" usually stars in a SaaS vendor's marketing materials.

However, companies are still confused by uncertainties in pricing models and contract agreements, note Forrester analysts William Band and Peter Marston in the May 2008 "Best Practices: The Smart Way To Implement CRM" report.

"SaaS pricing models that seem simple and inexpensive (flat per-user monthly fees) can become costly and complex when users sign up for different pieces of functionality and support options," the analysts write. "Additional charges often apply for support, configuration services, additional functionality or going beyond a preset storage limit."

In addition, business users and IT staffers can also be "unpleasantly surprised by difficult-to-enforce service-level agreements or onerous provisions that kick-in at the end of the contract term," Band and Marston note.

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