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Viability of the SaaS Document Management Model
Our take is that Document Management deployed as SaaS is very viable. But interestingly, a McKinsey report from earlier this year says not so.
Last Friday’s Formtek blog was about ECM deployed as SaaS. Since then I came across an interesting report by McKinsey/IDC that appeared in April at Software 2006 and follow-up blog discussions about McKinsey’s predictions about the future of SaaS.
In particular, this chart from the report has generated a lot of comment:
In the chart, there are nine areas of Application types that are predicted to have little SaaS adoption between now and 2008.
Of interest here is that Documents and Records Management is one of those application areas. We think that McKinsey doesn’t seem to have gotten it right here, but it may be a question of timing. The potential for Document Management deployed as SaaS is huge, especially in the SME space. But the number of players in the Document Management SaaS space is still very small and the available functionality via the services available today is still rudimentary. The segment seems poised to grow. Technology no longer is a limiting factor.
One trend where Document Management SaaS growth is emerging is as an add-on module within already established SaaS applications. For example, SugarCRM and Saleforce.com both offer Document Management add-ons to their base CRM products. Pure-play Document Management and Records Management SaaS are likely to follow.
