In today’s Enterprise Software marketplace, Software-as-a-Service is the future.  Thin client cloud solutions continue to replace the perpetual enterprise model as the generally accepted software delivery paradigm.  Traditional Enterprise 1.0 software development houses view the new paradigm as a short-term marketing solution for the lack of IT resources or capital budgets.  However, the new paradigm represents a completely divergent strategy.  The realization of enterprise solutions in a traditional corporate owned and farmed environment will be something our children read about on Wikipedia.  Certainly, a few organizational circumstances may dictate the hosting of solutions on their own infrastructure, but the perpetual enterprise model is becoming the exception rather than the norm.

Organizations are recognizing that if their business does not require hosting solutions using traditional IT infrastructure, the infrastructure becomes a liability.  In a prior post, I quoted Geir Ramleth, Bechtel SVP & CIO who states, “The risk for enterprises that don't start a SaaS migration strategy soon is that their IT organizational structures will be a competitive disadvantage.”

As such, Software-as-a-Service provides a competitive advantage and an opportunity for organizations to discontinue the clumsy perpetual enterprise model.  By taking advantage of an easily scalable model that conserves capital and reduces effort, Software-as-a-Service is not an alternative, but a model that simply makes business sense.  For the security, governance, risk and compliance decision-makers that leverage incident reporting, case management, dispatch and guard tour software, the opportunity to switch to a Software-as-a-Service model results in the opportunity to pay as you go and help your bottom line, period.