The shift towards “Software as a Service (SaaS)” paradigm is accelerating in the industry due to several factors; Not just the cost of having to build and maintain the Technology Infrastructure is significantly lower but more importantly businesses can build what they need on-demand and faster that makes them highly agile and responsive to the market demands. Today the Infrastructure as well as security have come along way and are quite matured.
Companies don't have to spend much on the technology Infrastructure (Hardware, Software, dedicated IT resources) in-house as they can purchase them as a service. For e.g., Microsoft® offers Business Productivity on-line Suite (BPOS) that allow the customers to purchase and use a bundle of Exchange, SharePoint, office live meeting and office communications software online starting $15per user / month. Google offers their version at $50/user/month. Zoho offers host of software’s & Services that are worth looking into. Amazon.com offers what they call Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) where you can obtain your computing capacity. In essence, you only pay for what you need and scale up as your needs grow.
“Focus on your business not on IT infrastructure” is the tag line for these cloud computing evangelists. SaaS is “always on” for anytime and anywhere access and comes with the added benefits of backup and security. How can I trust my data with the SaaS provider? I will certainly look in to the history and security/privacy policies of the SaaS providers before choosing one.
How do I get started?
Messaging, Collaboration & Communication tools
BPOS from Microsoft offers good value for money. Follow these links below to learn more.
For CRM, Salesforce.com® offers at $99/user/year. Microsoft Dynamics CRM hosted version is available for customers at $49/user/month. Visit http://www.seepath.com/salesforce.aspx and select free trail. For Dynamics CRM, visit http://www.microsoft.com/dynamics/en/us/default.aspx.
ERP: Traditionally ERP market has been dominated by SAP and Oracle and I believe they offer hosted versions either through their partner network and / or direct. Microsoft offers hosted version of it’s ERP as well. Visit http://www.microsoft.com/dynamics/en/us/offers.aspx.
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