Near Shore and SaaS

SaaS is about driving down the TCO of applications. There has always been this issue related to SaaS applications. How do you customize it as quickly and as inexpensively as possible?

In the long run, the innovations that are shared reduce the cost to each party but how do you reduce the cost of customizations? How do you speed them given the inherent tension that exists when the SaaS vendor wants slow, incremental change to the platform and customers want rapid evolution of their capabilities?

The answer lies in three areas: Sound SOA in the platform, a robust customization architecture that is supported by off platform services and servers and near-shore development to reduce development costs.

1. Sound SOA practices: SOA has a lot of meanings but the simplest explantion is that the platform is architected in such a way as to provide services to the outside world through defined interfaces. For instance, an ecommerce platform might have a "payment" service that it exposes so that it allows people to create their own services to different payment gateways. The platform never changes but clients can extend the platform. Without this, no SaaS platform will survive for very long.

2. Customization Architecture: Our clients are not willing to wait for their enhancements while a SaaS platform vendor decides whether or not to create a customization for them in the platform. At SaaS Accelerator, we rely on a software/hardware architecture that allows us to create applications and services, host them on our own servers and have them seamlessly interact with the SaaS platform. This allows for rapid deployment, unlimited customization and avoids the biggest pitfall of SaaS: non-sharable customizations adding so much complexity to the platform that the entire thing grinds to a halt.

3. Near shore development: Off shore development is find but near shore is always better. Time zones make a difference. Having real-time access to your team is important. Cultures make a difference. Groups that are more similar work together better. I can't tell you how many times cultural differences have hurt projects we have worked on. It is worth admitting that development will be eternal and reducing the costs of that part of the equation is as much an operational expenses as is the fee for the servers.

Through these three key concepts, mature organizations can leverage SaaS platforms, reduce their TCO and reduce their development expenses, thus driving even more efficiency from their IT systems. They have to be willing to throw out some bureaucracy but that's a small price to pay for this kind of cost savings.