Lee Gomes writes in the Wall Street Journal about software-as-a-service:
AMR analyst Bob Bois blames what he calls an “expectation gap” between the just-add-water marketing of SAAS suppliers and the hard realities faced by companies — especially big ones, with complex needs — when they try to actually implement a program.
One indication of the growing complexity of SAAS software comes from the Web page of Salesforce.com itself, which lists scores of consultants, integrators and add-on pieces of software that work with the core Salesforce.com offering.
Looked at one way, it’s evidence of a thriving “ecosystem” of products and services. But it also suggests that as SAAS companies grow to serve more users, they increasingly take on some of the complexity of the software approaches they are trying to replace.
