SaaS and BPM
A quick Google of the words “SaaS” and “BPM” will throw up many hits – and they make for interesting but contradictory reading. I’ve spent quite some time recently trying to make sense of it all and to come up with my own opinion.
The analysts think it’s a great idea, all the more so given the current economic situation and the financial pressures which clearly make a case for companies to consider a lower cost, and opex-based, means of embracing BPMS. The vendors fall into two camps: those that believe in the model and are capable of delivering it; and those that either don’t believe in the model, or can’t deliver it. There are only a couple of vendors in the first group today, and many in the second. You can’t really split apart that second group because those that can’t deliver it are very good at listing reasons why it’s a bad idea anyway. Here are the reasons they tend to offer up:
1) Security: no company will allow critical data to sit in the cloud. Un-huh. So how come Salesforce.com is full of critical information around customers, pipelines, deals, revenue etc. So yes its’ a concern, always is, but it’s manageable and ultimately it will come down to the economics – just how much money are you willing to spend to avoid the perceived risk?
2) The standards aren’t mature. Well it seems to me that web services are working pretty well so I’m not too sure what it is we would be waiting for. If it can go through a firewall (which of course it can) then it can sit in the network and not the basement.
3) Performance. Ok so this one I do have sympathy for – any BPMS which integrates with CRM, ERP etc, is going to be making round trips through the firewall and there may be a price to pay. Conversely though – if more and more of the business apps are hosted in the cloud, there’s a chance for a service provider to host them all and eliminate the round trip. Some guys in Redmond seem to be considering this.
4) Differentiation: how can you differentiate your business if you’re using the same stuff as your competitors? This one I really don’t get at all. If you choose to use a hosted process such as, let’s say, SOX compliance, or customer on-boarding – then it’s not really a differentiating process anyway, it’s just a cost to be minimised. If it’s actually a true BPM service that you’re accessing to implement your own workflow, then the differentiation is in the workflow and the business activity it supports, and as long as you choose a capable provider, you’ll get the same amount of differentiation as you would by doing it in-house.
So does that mean that I’m all for offering a full BPM SaaS? Well not exactly, but it’s more that I think those who argue against are likely doing so while trying to develop the capability and will suddenly announce that they are in favour of it, have been all along, and by the way, have a product that delivers it.
About the Author: Paul Moorhead is the Product Manager at Singularity.
