Problems and disadvantages of SaaS

Everyone is somewhat surprised why the SaaS market is developing slowly. It amazes me why they don’t give obvious reasons. In various sources, several reasons for the low speed of SaaS development are cited:
- strict quality requirements and uninterrupted communication channel;
- limited functionality due to the features of browsers. At present, it is still not possible to create a web service with functionality similar to offline applications;
- insufficient speed;
- conservatism and mistrust of users to the confidential information processed “not known where”.

This is all well and good, of course, BUT: the first three technical issues will be solved over time, since progress cannot be stopped. In my opinion, however, this will not solve the problem of development, since the problems lie not there. All these drawbacks are technical. It seems that the very principle of providing online functionality is more important than market realities.

Let's put ourselves in the place of a company, a potential client. What will be important in reality? I will now answer as a person who in several companies was responsible for corporate automation:

1. Patchwork SaaS in its current form promotes disgusting and fraught with a huge number of problems "patchwork" automation. Here, take the software for your main activity, here for the workflow, put offline accounting (1C), and here we offer you an excellent SaaS service. All this is not interconnected and does not in any way reduce the costs of IT, and in addition creates costs for the organization of interaction and collaboration of all these pieces.
2. Inflexible functional . Any corporate software is customized. Much. Under the features. Because those who sell corporate software know that every business considers itself unique. And the ability to maintain this uniqueness is a competitive advantage. Remember all about the popularity of 1C and listen to its users. They all repeat as one mantra - you can do anything in it. The possibility of custom development, the possibility of customization and so on and so forth. SaaS developers almost completely ignore this need.
3. Safety issues Understanding and knowing the fears of users, SaaS services ignore these fears and do not offer solutions. If you want to give people a sense of security, create an option to back up data for a customer. On his hard drive. In an open format. To even if your entire company explodes tomorrow, the user will have data that he can download to another system. One manufacturer of banking software in the terms of the license provides the companies-buyers with the right to receive the source code of the software, which is stored in special repositories abroad, and goes to the company in case something happens to the company developer.
4. Indistinct marketing . I am surprised at this position in general: here you have a wonderful SaaS service for personnel management. SO WHAT? What companies do with this wonderful system? This company has many other tasks. Why is it considered a normal strategy to provide as a SaaS service a small piece of what is needed?
   SaaS manufacturers take the most common tasks that everyone seems to have and automate them. Everyone has task management! Great, we will do task management! Everyone has CRM! Great, let's do CRM! And the fact that this separately solved problem does not mean ANYTHING to the end user doesn’t really care. This is a classic approach of IT startups that completely ignore the consumer and talk about how beautiful their task management system. And who needs it? In the current context and with the restrictions, almost no one. Only the so-called geeks or followers of technological fashion.
   Just imagine that you need to cook borscht. You buy potatoes, carrots, meat and YOU HAVE THE OPPORTUNITY to cut and mix them. And now we present the SaaS offer: a unique potato! the most potato potatoes in the world! already cleaned! in beautiful packaging! (but no one says that it cannot be used to cook borsch, because it does not get from the package) ...
   And now attention is the question: Why does nobody sell borscht ?

PS The purpose of this post is to draw the attention of respected developers to unhappy consumers, and not to diminish the success of excellent services. There are a lot of niches that need business automation. For example, in Russia there is no software for automation of catering and Event-agencies. That is not at all. But they have needs. Because the volume of accounting information required for one event is huge. But nobody writes for them SaaS-service. And task management systems, of which there is simply a huge amount on the market, including opensource solutions, continue to multiply by budding.