Courtesy of a news item on InternetNews.com, I learned that enterprises' desire to offload costs associated with maintaining their own software or storage infrastructures doesn't automatically mean a boom for Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) vendors. While the technology - the Software - is undoubtedly important, so is the Service. SaaS customers need to be able to trust their vendors.
The article talked about outages suffered by Amazon and how the problems these created for Amazon's customers were exacerbated by the lack of Service Level Agreements (SLAs) and email support. I was surprised that such a well-known name as Amazon did not have SLAs in place. In the risk-averse industry in which I work - architecture, engineering, construction (AEC) and property - customers have, from the very earliest days, demanded written undertakings about their providers' uptime, etc.
Selected quotes:
- "It's important that companies try and exceed expectations and go the extra mile."
- "It's much easier to switch from a SaaS application than a normal application because you don't have to pull out the application and replace it and test it and secure it."
