SaaS Growth Depends on Integration
Service-delivered Software has to Work Well with On-premise Apps
Feb 11, 2009
“Today, software-as-a-service is pretty much a separate, disparate system,” said Jonathan McCormick, chief operating officer of Intermedia, a software-as-a-service provider. “What we’re really trying to say is … what kind of things can we do that integrate SaaS and on-premise into one operation?”
McCormick was interviewed by a reporter at a luncheon Intermedia hosted for journalists in San Francisco Jan. 27, the day the company, which specializes in distributing Microsoft business software as a service, introduced its plan for improving SaaS and on-premise software integration.
UserPilot Synchs Active Directory
Intermedia’s integration solution is UserPilot, a software tool that helps a company synchronize its Microsoft Active Directory file management system with Intermedia’s hosted Active Directory service. UserPilot works with Microsoft Exchange for e-mail, SharePoint for project collaboration and Office Communications Server 2007 for unified communication.
With UserPilot, a business can securely synchronize user log-ins to enable a single username and password combination for employees to use for both on-premise and SaaS applications. Any changes in access to the on-premise Active Directory will simultaneously be made in the Intermedia directory, said Robert Leibholz, the company’s vice president of sales and business development, in a presentation to reporters at the luncheon.
Headaches Juggling On-premise and SaaS
Most businesses start with on-premise software and bring in SaaS solutions one application at a time, said McCormick, but as they convert more applications to SaaS, IT administrators have to juggle multiple applications of each type, which can be an impediment to wider adoption of SaaS.
In fact, 65 percent of IT administrators surveyed by the research firm IDC cited integration issues as the top barrier to SaaS adoption, according to a Dec. 10, 2008, article, “Want SaaS? Get Integration First!” on the Web site DestinationCRM.com.
If these integration problems can be solved, companies may convert more applications to SaaS, Liebholz said in an interview.
Typically, businesses convert e-mail management to SaaS first, he said, “because the world uses things like Yahoo Mail and they are used to the concept of e-mail from the cloud.” Next they may convert sales force automation or customer relationship management applications to the SaaS model, but are more likely to keep industry-specific, proprietary or highly sensitive applications on-premise.
SaaS Advantages are Many
Smoother integration will also expose more businesses to the overall benefits of SaaS, he said: fewer software management responsibilities; included updates, bug fixes and other maintenance; and access for small-to-medium sized businesses to enterprise-level applications.
SaaS also offers scalability, Liebholz added. Intermedia’s service plans, for instance, offer a fixed monthly fee based on the number of “seats,” that is the number of employees who can use the software at the same time.
Like a cell phone plan that offers a set number of minutes per month, an Intermedia customer can buy a plan that includes 10, 20 or 25 seats, for example. A company buying a 10-seat plan may only have eight employees, but can use up the remaining two seats as their business grows at no extra charge.
