Software as a Service, SaaS, has as many meanings as the ITIL framework has processes. I have been studying the amazing amount of publicity surrounding IT Service Management software for about three years now. The amount of information is staggering.

Just when all the ITSM software vendors were finally in alignment with their ITIL clones, killing any innovation in truly increasing customer satisfaction, and the process vendors had choked the life out of any hope of ever getting a grip on your business, SaaS reared its head and took traditional ITSM software for a new spin.

Did this help innovation? From a technology stand point, the answer is Absolutely. From a software innovation point of view, I have found that, unfortunately, once again vendors are cloning themselves into a corner with framework feature creep.

I won't get into why I am so passionate about the "Clone Wars" in this document. I will though take a peek at Software as a Service and take a glance under the covers.

Before I start, let me be clear. I have no dog in this fight. A decade of installing IT Service Management software has left me passionate about the industry, and a bit skeptical. A writer and skeptic, who I admire, put it best when I was chatting with him recently, there is a big difference between "Best Practice" and "Real Practice"

Finally, as with everything in our IT world, there are the preachers and the popes, the purists and the skeptics. I like to remind colleagues, you don't have to be the least bit spiritual to memorize biblical verse and spew it out as your own doctrine.

With that, let the purists, pundits and skeptics keep the good fight going, while the rest of us actually conduct business every day.

SaaS, straight from Wikipedia, is "defined" as:

Software as a Service (SaaS, typically pronounced 'sass') is a model of software deployment whereby a provider licenses an application to customers for use as a service on demand

SaaS software vendors may host the application on their own web servers or download the application to the consumer device, disabling it after use or after the on-demand contract expires

Using SaaS can also conceivably reduce the up-front expense of software purchases, through less costly, on-demand pricing from hosting service providers. SaaS lets software vendors control and limit use, prohibits copies and distribution, and facilitates the control of all derivative versions of their software.

I think it's important to take our first detour right here with "conceivably reduce the up-front expense". Let the FUD begin. I agree with the principle of this statement. Using software with a different pricing model could "conceivably reduce" upfront cost. If you look at vendor FUD, you can get ROI quotes all over the map. Due to this, I want to try to focus on the benefits of SaaS from a non financial standpoint.

I say this because, in my research, many ITSM SaaS vendors also have professional services involved with the initial purchase. With my background, it would be heresy to denounce professional services, so I will only say not to let the attractive nature of pricing lure you into a false sense of excitement. Just like with traditional ITSM Software, real costs can be buried in the "deployment".

Wait! With SaaS deployment time should be lowered. Well, let's leave that alone.

Characteristics of SaaS, the meat of what SaaS has to offer, differ as wildly as do the framework purist opinions on "best practice". Wikipedia, though has a set of characterics it uses to define SaaS.

• network-based access to, and management of, commercially available software
• activities managed from central locations rather than at each customer's site, enabling customers to access applications remotely via the Web.
• application delivery typically closer to a one-to-many model (single instance, multi-tenant architecture) than to a one-to-one model, including architecture, pricing, partnering, and management characteristics
• centralized feature updating, which obviates the need for end-users to download patches and upgrades.
• frequent integration into a larger network of communicating software - either as part of a mashup or as a plugin to a platform as a service. (Service oriented architecture is naturally more complex than traditional models of software deployment.)

Well that certainly clears up what SaaS is! Although I have to wonder about point five "frequent integration", I see this as a clear challenge to the SaaS purist out there. Integration is critical, although in my opinion at the end of the day, nearly impossible with either SaaS or on premise ITSM software. Integration is a feel good word to make you realize that this new million dollar software works with all your other systems. Too often though, the list of "aligned" integration points is longer than the contract you signed to purchase the software itself. I digress.

From CIO.com, "It's stunning to me the number of SaaS companies that don't even consider an API as part of the development cycle," In my research, integration is one of those high on the list FUD issues that keep organizations away from the many benefits of SaaS. Security is also another rub. A full list of FUD on SaaS can be found here.

Ultimately just plain misunderstanding of Cloud Computing and SaaS is keeping people away. It amazes me that the generic "Sales Department" had no problem with SaaS with the wild adoption of Salesforce, but when it comes to the other departments in IT, there is a dramatic slowdown in adoption. Could it be that the Sales department is interested in getting business done? To conclude that would be to conclude that IT Support and other business functions live in a world of process paralysis and are unwilling to change without much research.

As far as this observer is concerned, integration in the cloud is a valid concern; but from my research, it's there, and it's real. The vendor may use middleware to accomplish this, not very SaaSy, but yes it does the job.

Gartner has defined cloud computing (wait that's not SaaS, well that's for the purist to discuss) as:

"a style of computing in which massively scalable IT-related capabilities are provided 'as a service' using Internet technologies to multiple external customers."

From CIO.com, " You might say software-as-a-service kicked off the whole push toward cloud computing by demonstrating that IT services could be easily made available over the Web. While SaaS vendors originally did not use the word cloud to describe their offerings, analysts now consider SaaS to be one of several subsets of the cloud computing market"

This raises the question, can any software be SaaS? " Technically, you can put any application in the cloud. But that doesn't mean it's a good idea. For example, there's little reason to run a desktop disk defragmentation or systems analysis tool in the cloud, because you want the application sitting on the desktop, dedicated to the system with little to no latency, says Pund-IT analyst Charles King. "

Net/Net, anything can be called anything. Welcome to marketing 101. The purists have a set of values to evaluate if something is truly SaaS and I am sure this will keep evolving as we start to live our life with our head and organizations in the cloud.

In my humble opinion, SaaS should be about:

1. Faster adoption of technologies.
2. Abandonment of antiquated ways of selling software AND services.
3. Lowering infrastructure costs of supporting new technology.
4. Harness the power of large servers with redundant and plentiful availability.

Period. That's it. No more no less. We have the opportunity with SaaS to excuse our old behaviors of selling and delivering software, and become more virtuous. I hope that happens; but I am a budding skeptic.

SaaS, though, is evolving, and through this evolution we will see not only technological advancements, but understanding and enlightment.

I cannot speak for the enlightment of the IT community, because the use of those words, enlighten, IT and community, could start a rift in the space time continuum. I can though look at where SaaS has come from, where it is, and where I think it is going.

Let's start with some pretty pictures.

From Saugatuck Technology, you can see an evolutionary picture of Software as a Service. From this picture we can see that we crossed the "tipping point" about 2 years ago. Lots of fun fluffy words in this shot, but in reality I feel it is accurate as a time line, at this POINT in time.

We are past the early adapters and SaaS 1.0. People are using terminology everyday that would be very obnoxious just a few short years ago. I thank companies like VMware for helping us understand that a virtual machine (oxymoron alert) is just as real as the new blade server from Dell.

Virtualization of operating systems has jumped the shark, just yesterday, I was reading of VMware's plans to virtualize the desktop. Yes it will happen, but like SaaS what will we give up for this ease of use? My mother should have a virtualized desktop, I should be able to snapshot it and return her to life on eBay in seconds.

Would I though, I thought, allow someone to virtualize my desktop?

NO! I am too tied to the ego centric world of my desktop. It's not called "personal computing" for a good giggle!

That doesn't mean that I do not hope to evolve to accept the surrender of "My Documents" to Google, or any other vendor willing to make me feel warm and safe.

This brings us to the phase of SaaS that we are in now.

Yes I understand:

• · The power of using a cloud-like infrastructure for my applications.
• · That the web is always there (well...).
• · The value of trying a piece of software, deploying it and getting benefits quickly without consultants running around my organization asking for passwords and directions for dinner.
• · In these economic times of uncertainty scaling up or down my usage and up front cost makes me happy.

Is SaaS mature enough for something as critical as my IT service management?

I have no problem letting the sales people use whatever. Heck it's less support for me; but am I to trust that SaaS has evolved to the point where my organization can bet it's very reputation on supporting our users to something I will never phyically touch?

Alas here is the "tipping point". If we, for a moment, trust in the cloud, trust in the vendors, and trust in the evolution of software from the cloud, the answer is, equivocally YES!

Although, I would rather wait and see.

Forrester Research has a SaaS maturity model to help me with my feelings of insecurity. Also Forrester doesn't seem as scary as other analysts, maybe it's just the sound of wind through the trees, when I hear the name Forrester, that makes me feel that way.

From the Microsoft MSDN Blog:

orrester classifies the maturity of SaaS solutions on six levels. We define each level according to its answer to the question of who provides what to whom (see Figure 1).

Level 0: Outsourcing is not SaaS. In outsourcing, a service provider operates a major application or a unique application landscape for a large enterprise customer. As the outsourcing company can't leverage this application for a second customer, outsourcing does not qualify as SaaS.

Level 1: Manual ASP business models target midsize companies. At level 1, a hosting provider runs packaged applications like SAP's ERP 6.0, which require significant IT skills, for multiple midsize enterprises. Usually, each client has a dedicated server running its instance of the application and is able to customize the installation in the same way as self-hosted applications.

Level 2: Industrial ASPs cut the operating costs of packaged applications to a minimum. At level 2, an ASP uses sophisticated IT management software to provide identical software packages with customer-specific configurations to many SMB customers. However, the software package is still the same software that was originally created for self-hosted deployment.

Level 3: Single-app SaaS is an alternative to traditional packaged applications. At level 3, software vendors create new generations of business applications that have SaaS capabilities built in. Web-based user interface (UI) concepts and the ability to serve a huge number of tenants with one, saleable infrastructure are typical characteristics. Customization is restricted to configuration. Single-app SaaS adoption thus focuses on SMBs. Salesforce.com's CRM application initially entered the market at this level.

Level 4: Business-domain SaaS provides all the applications for an entire business domain. At level 4, an advanced SaaS vendor provides not only a well-defined business application but also a platform for additional business logic. This complements the original single application of the previous level with third-party packaged SaaS solutions and even custom extensions. The model even satisfies the requirements of large enterprises, which can migrate a complete business domain like "customer care" toward SaaS.

Level 5: Dynamic Business Apps-as-a-service is the visionary target. Forrester's Dynamic Business Application imperative embraces a new paradigm of application development: "design for people, build for change." At level 5, advanced SaaS vendors coming from level 4 will provide a comprehensive application and integration platform on demand, which they will prepopulate with business applications or business services. They can compose tenant-specific and even user-specific business applications on various levels. The resulting process agility will attract everyone, including large enterprise customers.

"Design for people, build for change.", now that is something I can relate to; but I am not sure, in our current epoch of SaaS, that this is 100% true. I can't off the top of my head right now remember the vendor who uses "Master the Dynamics of Change", but if you have "Mastered the Dynamics of Change", you didn't need to in the first place.

So this maturity model gives us a better idea SaaS as it relates to the adoptance and the enterprise.

I am still struggling to tell if it is right for my IT Service Management organization.

Just like everything else on the internet the 1.0, 2.0 monkier seems to take us to our next look at SaaS and hopefully some answers that I can translate to my business.

Crimson Consulting had a great post on SaaS. Here you can actually get a feel for the SaaS epochs and maybe glance into the future.

SaaS 1.0: Hosted/ASP-based Applications

The first generation of SaaS witnessed the meteoric rise and catastrophic demise of the ASP (Application Service Provider) market. The early hosting/ASP models were based on the ASP purchasing a restricted use perpetual license from the software vendor and then providing subscription-based offerings to their end customers. ASPs offered primarily packaged applications targeted at SMB market.

SaaS 2.0:“Pure” SaaS Applications

SaaS 2.0, is reaching a stage of maturity. This version of SaaS offers a complete range of functional and departmental applications such as CRM, ERP, Financials, HR etc. The applications are mostly developed for SaaS (“ground up”/Web native). These apps typically have a shared code base and a one-to-many delivery model.

SaaS 3.0: Hybrid SaaS Applications

SaaS 2.0 focused on the small and mid-sized business markets. SaaS 3.0 is emerging with the adoption by Enterprise clients of the SaaS capability. Consequently, these larger companies are demanding and evolution from the pure-play SaaS model to meet their need to globally scale the SaaS solution to meet their specific corporate needs. With the entrant of the Enterprise customer, we see the increase in demands for customization, thus the rise of the seemingly contradictory hydrid pure-play and hosted SaaS model. Bigger customers are requiring integration with on premise applications, flexible delivery models, based on customer needs that are driving an evolution of targeted applications.

This next generation of SaaS is moving from a purely hosted offering to a hosted offering integrated with On Premise OR offered as either hosted or On Premise service. The code base Spans from multi-tenant at all layers to single tenant eliminating some of the earlier economies of scale of the multi-tenancy model. Customers are beginning to demand more control over on-premise upgrades and may have control over SaaS upgrades, configuration, and customization by business users, integration by IT . Today, these services are mostly developed for SaaS (“ground up”/native). The pricing model is also evolving to include a flexible subscription/licensing hybrid.

1. Choice on licensing.
2. Choice on location.

Still, I worry that some of the features that made traditional IT Service Management Software powerful would be lost in a web only client.

1. Any licensing model I want concurrent, fixed, seat, enterprise.

2. My data located anywhere I want, in "the cloud" or locally.

3. A rich client for complex administration tasks, so I would not have to learn scripting to integrate with my desktop management tool.

4. Web portals for customers and technicians that allows easy and flexible usage.

5. An "in the cloud ability" to know that my data is physically not co-mingled with other organizations data.

My dream ITSM SaaS would also have:

1. All modules included in the base price.

2. One price for unlimited customer portal usage,

3. Flexibility to create modules for purchasing, CRM, Facilities, without having to JAVA myself into a straight jacket.

4. A try before you buy option, that is not predicated on my "time to purchase".

5. Driven by customer innovation, customer demands and NOT by ITIL certification.

Maybe SaaS 3.0 will bring my dream to life, it is just a dream. Having been on both sides of the fence, someone who managed a large support organization, someone who installed support software and someone who sold support software, I can only hope that our community forces the "choice" with SaaS and with ITSM software.

In conclusion, remember caveat emptor. We are living in a time where data and ideas are being exchanged and recycled faster than we can keep up. The future is in the clouds, I am sure of it. Just allow me some time and choice in how I "weather the storm" of the cloud revolution.