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SaaS: Integration Remains a Block to Acceptance
SaaS and its twin sister Cloud Computing are taking the IT world by storm. The numbers of companies both adopting and dabbling in SaaS is on an ever-upward curve. Applications like CRM and online backup are seeing great acceptance.
But the big hump for SaaS to overcome is integration between on-site applications and with SaaS offerings from other vendors. Integration has always been tough even when all applications are in-house. Integrating with SaaS applications raises the bar with special considerations that are unique to SaaS.
Questions around security, the exchange of data from behind the firewall, to an application on the internet, is perhaps of biggest concern with SaaS for companies. Latency of data transfer can also pose challenges.
The ability to modify or customize SaaS applications in a way that allows successful integration is a third worry. Some SaaS vendors like Salesforce offer extensive APIs that allow extensive customization, but other SaaS products are strictly limited to customizations or simple API access, making tight integrations difficult.
Forrester sums up the problem in their recent report on SaaS adoption: “Firms should not expect any magic integration solutions, SaaS or otherwise.”
