Enterprise applications Toolkit
Story: SaaS industry 'will collapse' in two years
An error of judgement
I agree with Rikke, the argument for SaaS is compelling, although more compelling for the customer than the vendor. Lawson is a smart company, but Debes is making a significant error in his judgement call here, and not just in his use of the well worn and ill considered cocaine analogy.
To dismiss SaaS simply because he has perceived three supposedly similar markets fail completely disregards a myriad of advances in both the appetite for the delivery model, and the technology capabilities to support it. It seems as though they may be hedging their bets anyway, developing software that can be on or off-premise hosted sounds like SaaS by any other name. So why rail against it? Hubris would be my guess, that and the fact that their classic licensing model makes them better margins, so why promote the ‘other ‘ option?
Also, to quote:
“People are stupid. History has shown it repeats itself, and people make the same mistakes.”
Well Mr Debes, history is also littered with once successful companies that have gone to the wall or been acquired because they failed to keep up with disruptive trends. If you truly believe in what you say then I’ll look out for Lawson becoming consigned to the annals of history.
Full Talkback thread
