Greg Spotts at Fast Company will be releasing a theoretical case study for using the SaaS model. He claims this is the way to liberate yourself from the reigns of Microsoft enterprise software. And, you can fire your ‘IT Guy’. The SaaS model is great but its adoption rate is and will be for some time quite slow.

I have discussed why apoption for enterprises will legitimize the technology, much like most productivity platforms. I also noted why they will be the last to implement. I have not as of yet addressed adoption by small businesses.

I think small business adoption will come sooner as they are far more agile. But I still don’t think the usability of the SaaS model is quite where it needs to be for mass adoption. If you tell your average small business to drop its infrastructure in favor of a new platform they will definitely look at you funny. And when you tell them they will lose control of their data, they will ask you to leave. Security will be the deterrent of the model. And at this point an average small business owner will have to unwillingly approach a technological learning curve for adotion, implementation, and migration.

It’s feasible, but don’t go firing your IT guy just yet.

Scott’s case study will be released Friday.

Is Now the Time to Dump Microsoft and Fire Your IT Manager?

Read more from me on SaaS:
Office 2.0 in a Web 2.0 World
Web 2.0, SOA, SaaS
Dynamics
Web 3.0 In Production
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