The ‘un peachy’ side of Enterprise 2.0 SaaS
Outside of security (something the CIO cares deeply about), I can’t tell you how many times business execs I deal with say that are terrified at the prospects of their SaaS based intranets or extranets disappearing during a critical time.
For all the excellent analysis out there about Enterprise 2.0 adoption strategy, reliability is extremely critical to piercing the culture barrier in any sustainable way. Any well thought out adoption plan will fizzle out with a broken promise on system uptime. Folks will go right back to their old ways. And the naysayers will throw the “i told you so” argument in your face to derail the initiative.
SaaS is extremely promising and I’m a big proponent. And this is not about Yammer who seem to be communicating well about this issue with customers on Twitter.
However, balancing the mission critical nature of your intended business activities with optimal software delivery is critical. SLAs really don’t mean much in the case of mission critical systems. Really, what’s the point of getting a few months of free service in return if it means 1000’s of productive hours lost or worse, lost new business or unhappy customers. And for many smaller, growing businesses, a lawsuit is hardly worth it.