

Who is Not Afraid of the SaaS Wolf? - qhoxie
http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/saas_wolf.php

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jwilliams
Great line in this article: _In other words, IBM knows how to make money
whichever way the wind blows._

This is really true. IBM can give with one hand and take with the other - they
really excel at this due to their scope.

And whilst Cloud Computing and SaaS feel like relatively new emerging
technologies, IBM has been pushing their "On Demand" mantra/brand for years
(since 2002). So even if it's not necessarily apparent in some cases, I think
they are well geared for this kind of market change.

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netcan
Is SaaS a model where you can actually get more out of your paying users?

Sure there's lots of free SaaS. But generally speaking, it seems that software
vendors are getting a little bit more (per user) from SaaS then the installed
equivalent when they do get paid.

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jwilliams
> But generally speaking, it seems that software vendors are getting a little
> bit more (per user) from SaaS then the installed equivalent when they do get
> paid.

Maybe, but there are economies of scale with SaaS.

User's don't want to worry about servers, hosting, data centers, backups etc -
I see this even with large corporates that already run their own significant
infrastructure (e.g. Banks). These companies want to exit being IT shops. Then
there are companies that never had this as a core competency in the first
place (e.g. No blanket rule - But probably a lot of primary industries,
manufacturing, logistics).

In many cases... Even if the software cost was all equal, SaaS can still offer
a service cheaper than the user running it themselves.

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netcan
Yeah sure. I'm not saying the price point is unjustified. Or that there are no
added benefits to users that justify it.

