The smart folks over at Appirio have posted a direct and pointed response to Harry Debes' comments about SaaS being a passing fad as my previous post highlighted. One of my favorite parts:
"When the sunk costs have been fully depreciated, customers effectively run the software for free." Yeah,
right. This is a shocking lie – unless Debes and on-premise software
companies want to stop collecting maintenance payments from customers.
Tell on-premise customers who have had their maintenance fees raised without warning,
or had a running product suddenly characterized as "end of life"
because their vendor was hungry for an upgrade, that they're running
software for "free." The even greater cost is the lack of business
flexibility these rigid systems empart on their customers.
right. This is a shocking lie – unless Debes and on-premise software
companies want to stop collecting maintenance payments from customers.
Tell on-premise customers who have had their maintenance fees raised without warning,
or had a running product suddenly characterized as "end of life"
because their vendor was hungry for an upgrade, that they're running
software for "free." The even greater cost is the lack of business
flexibility these rigid systems empart on their customers.
Read the whole thing.
Venture Vice 