Business Reason #1 Revisited - ASP’s with Existing Apps

Dietrich Kappe, Monday, August 14, 2006 @ 9:00 am

OK, so it's not called Application Service Provider -- ASP -- anymore. Rather, it's SaaS, or Software as a Service. I suppose that's just as well, since ASP was often confused with the Microsoft's Active Server Pages.

Back in May, in my article 10 Business Reasons to Use AJAX, my number one reason to use Ajax had to do with SaaS's (or SaaS 2.0, as it's called now):

ASP's with existing applications. This ship has already sailed. The ASP's include GMail and Yahoo Mail, but extend to places like Salesforce.com, openair.com, and so on. The lower the switching costs, as in the case of email services, the more vulnerable you are to being overtaken by your slicker, more usable AJAX enabled competition. The argument for the consumers of ASP's is simple: reduced labor costs. If you can save 30 seconds on each operation, the ROI is easy to see.

I thought that it wasn't too early to check in on the progress here. Beyond the SaaS's mentioned above, Google has added the a spreadsheet and acquired Writely. Beyond Salesforce.com, other vendors are in the Ajax mix:

• NSite is building a portfolio of Ajax enabled SaaS tools, including quote and proposal management, channel management and purchase requisitions.
• Netsuite continues to invest in their Ajax based CRM and ERP dashboards.
• The Zoho suite of products now includes a CRM and online surveys.
• PushCRM is another Ajaxified SaaS CRM.
• 24SevenOffice is a European SaaS company offering CRM, ERP, Document Management, Calendering, etc.
• onProject is offering construction scheduling, project management and Sarbanes-Oxley compliance.
• I forgot 37signals and their suite of SaaS apps last time.

This is just the tip of the iceberg, I'm sure. Of course there are a ton of open source products that are incorporating Ajax but aren't technically SaaS, such as Sugar CRM and Zimbra (OK, had Ajax from the beginning), but these could be considered part of the trend.

One thing that hasn't really been considered here is that business has a tendency of getting impatient with IT. If you've ever consulted in the corporate world, you've come across the spreadsheet sneakernet, the MS Access CRM system, or the Visual Basic skunkworks in the marketing department. What happens when a business group decides to collaborate via Google Spreadsheet instead of waiting for IT? Given the hoops you have to jump through (two factor authentication, etc.) to log into a corporate Intranet these days, and the amount of time people spend working via broadband from home or the road, this sort of temptation may just be too great. Who is going to rope this mess in?

Technorati : CRM, ERP, SaaS, ajax, business reasons, trend

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