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SaaS: Lack of Ability to Integrate — Show-Stopper?
There’s a lot to like about the SaaS model — easy upgradability, reliability, affordability, and ease of use.
But what about the ability to integrate a SaaS application with something else, either another SaaS app or a traditional on-premise one? Users give SaaS a low mark — just 19 percent think that it is doable, based on a software satisfaction survey done by InformationWeek.
That’s pretty low. One’s first thought is that the reason for the problem might be because of the off-premises remoteness of the software. Somehow being in the same room with the machine running the software makes one feel it can be more easily comprehensible and more easy to connect/integrate with other applications.
Open Source software wins hands down when it comes to integration. Since all of the source code is available, anything is possible in terms of integration. Not so, of course, for closed proprietary software. Whether the software is running on your own on-premise machines or whether it is hosted in some location where you’ll never visit, how well you can integrate with closed software usually boils down to how good the software API is.
Traditional software has generally gotten better marks around integration than SaaS probably because traditional software as the incumbant has been around longer and has had more time to build more comprehensive APIs. SaaS has targeted ease-of-use with a strong focus on UI while SaaS APIs tend to be much weaker or non-existant when compared to their traditional software counterparts.
SaaS vendors that have been around the longest, like Salesforce.com, tend to have more well-developed capabilities around customization and integration. Most likely, integration will become less of an issue as SaaS vendors create more mature offerings and their API capabilities grow.
