Unveiling the Truth: Top SaaS Myths

August 11, 2015

One of the hottest topics in today’s tech world is SaaS- SaaS vs On-Premise; advantages of SaaS to both online and offline businesses, and more. Although its adoption is significantly growing, there are still a number of features which are still not yet clear, even to organizations that are already leveraging it. This has consequently […]

SaaS Cloud Myth

One of the hottest topics in today’s tech world is SaaS- SaaS vs On-Premise; advantages of SaaS to both online and offline businesses, and more. Although its adoption is significantly growing, there are still a number of features which are still not yet clear, even to organizations that are already leveraging it. This has consequently given birth to myths and misconceptions about SaaS, which if not debunked early enough, could ultimately affect how organizations are using SaaS.

The parties which have particularly been affected by myths are organizations which are still yet to take advantage of and experience what SaaS has to offer. Since the myths are majorly negative, prospective users are discouraged from strategizing and implementing SaaS in their overall system architecture. The only way to reverse this is debunking each myth, separating the truth and false information. Here are the top SaaS myths which are currently doing rounds in the market:

SaaS is a Reserve for Small Businesses

Lately, there has been a lot of buzz regarding how small businesses can leverage SaaS to reduce their overall operating costs and boost system efficiency to increase productivity, and consequently join the competition against large businesses. The popular assumption is that large corporations already have the capital and don’t need SaaS. They can easily acquire any infrastructure they need for expansion and probably trust their in-house IT experts way more than they would external service providers. Is this actually true? Should service providers buy into it and optimize SaaS for just small businesses?

Fortunately for large businesses, this is just a myth- It’s not and probably will never be true. Even though small and medium businesses need it more, SaaS is still open to and can be leveraged by large businesses. In fact, the implementation process is easier for the latter and can be adopted to increase collaboration across multiple sites and branches.

SaaS is Not Customizable

Some organizations favor on-premise solutions because they are presumably customizable, as opposed to SaaS. They view SaaS as a network of proprietary software, which is entirely controlled by service providers. That means only getting features which have been dictated and customized by providers. This fortunately, is entirely untrue. So, don’t be fooled any longer since SaaS is extensively customizable. Service providers usually distribute a software frameworks which can be easily tailored according to your system infrastructure, architecture and organization objectives. That’s why companies that operate differently sometimes leverage the same SaaS solutions which are built differently to suit their respective needs.

In fact, SaaS wins over on-premise because its customizations are automatically transferred to upgrades. Many on-premise solutions users shy away from installing updates because they nullify their customizations. As a result, they are stuck with outdated software, which is less secure and efficient compared to newer versions. The best way to free yourself from such software slavery is adopting an SaaS solution that allows you to stay updated with the latest upgrades and improvements without affecting your overall customizations.

SaaS is Very Unsecure

SaaS, for years, has been facing security challenges due to hackers who mostly target the biggest cloud services. Interestingly, it has never been as unsecure as on-premise software solutions. To most people, SaaS may seem unsecure due to attention major service providers like Google and Salesforce usually get for service disruptions. Although this occurs occasionally, it only affects a small number of SaaS solutions, and the incidents don’t last as long as on-premise outages-consequently making SaaS a better option for an enterprise which cannot afford frequent long service outages.

SaaS also comes with effective disaster management and recovery. The belief that you risk permanently crippling your operations in case of a severe service disruption is therefore untrue. Ironically, this only applies to on-premise services since a significant number of them are usually implemented without the requisite disaster recovery framework. SaaS relies on a system of secondary servers which store backups that kick in to provide service in case of a service outage.

You Give Up You Data Ownership Rights to the SaaS Provider

There’s a popular belief that handling your data through third party services means that you’ve surrendered your ownership rights to the service providers, who can view and use it as they please. Unfortunately, this myth is partly true since some service providers are guilty as charged.

There are many others however, who respect their clients’ rights and implement critical protocols to safeguard data security and usage. You can therefore leverage SaaS within your enterprise without worrying about unauthorized access or data distribution.

So, how can you discern between these two types of service providers? The secret lies in the service level agreement. By paying attention to the fine print in the agreements, you’ll comprehensively assess and understand your rights as a client, plus data handling protocols implemented by your service provider. You’ll consequently make an informed choice on the service provider to entrust with your valuable business data.

Of course there are many more myths on SaaS out there. That’s why it’s important to get familiar with how the service works by making further inquiries from service providers. With the myths out of the way, you can now start seriously considering SaaS as a strategy for your enterprise in improving regular operations and service delivery. Your overall architecture will eventually dictate the success of your SaaS strategy.

Author: Davis Porter

Image Courtesy: TAW4, freedigitalphotos.net

 

By Team FileCloud