Give him extra credit for honesty. Lawson Software CEO Harry Debes recently gave an incredibly candid interview to ZDNet, in which he dismisses the entire Software as a Service (SaaS) phenomenon as "hype" based on just one company's middling success (Salesforce), and suggests that the real benefit to proprietary software is customer lock-in.
Oracle's Larry Ellison said roughly the same thing a few months ago to Wall Street analysts, but he wasn't nearly as blunt about it. He just said that SaaS lowers his margins ("The last thing we want to do is have a very large business that's not profitable and drags our margins down") and makes it harder for Oracle to raise prices.
Lawson's Debes, however, takes this onto an entirely new level:
Getting signed up as a SaaS customer is fast, but getting out is just as fast, whereas traditional software is like cocaine -- you're hooked. It's too difficult and expensive to switch providers once you've invested in one. If it were easier to jump ship, a lot of people would've hit the eject button on SAP a long time ago.
Wow. I'm with Shaun Connolly on this one: the candor is breathtaking.
... Read more- prev
- 1
- next
