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SaaS vs On-Premise: Lowering Your Total Cost of Ownership(ENP Newswire Via Acquire Media NewsEdge) ENP Newswire - 28 March 2014 Release date- 27032014 - Today, more enterprise software purchasers choose software as a service (SaaS) offerings because companies can 'pay-as you-go' with customer support and upgrades usually a free part of the package. Still some companies still prefer the in-house option offered by traditional on-premise enterprise software, which are typically purchased with a required annual maintenance fee (22% upfront) to have customer support as well as enable your IT department to solve issues by downloading and installing hot fixes and service packs. So, if cloud is less than on-premise's 22% maintenance, then cloud is the simple choice. But if cloud was more than the 22% maintenance fee, would on-premise a better deal? Not necessarily. First consider the original upfront licensing fee. In addition, many companies forget to consider the total cost of ownership (TCO) of their on-premise investment, including: hardware, network, backup and development systems. The TCO includes the cost of human capital, such as project management, database, server, firewall, security, backup and help desk resource - not to mention the overtime pay for weekend work to install emergency hot fixes, hardware repairs, or security issues. And don't take our word for it. Analyst Derek Singleton at Software Advice created a TCO calculator designed to allow companies to compare cloud or SaaS, versus on-premise: http://www.softwareadvice.com/tco/. According to Singleton, buying a SaaS system lowers your sunk costs by allowing you to minimize your upfront investment. By spreading out your costs over time via a subscription license, you can better manage your financial risk. 'Many people focus on the subscription license as the true cost savings but your licensing costs for a SaaS and on-premise system, in my model, will catch up to each other by year 3 if you factor in the net present value (NPV) of a SaaS license,' says Singleton. 'The true savings of a SaaS system come from not having to manage your own IT infrastructure to manage hosting, data security, hardware maintenance.' The numbers don't lie. Ok. So TCO is one angle for comparison. What about the economic term 'opportunity cost'? When a business pays a large upfront cost for a software solution, it no longer has that cash available to grow the business. There's simply fewer funds to devote to their core competency. Consider this scenario: is there an opportunity cost to your business if you buy on-premise software for $250,000 plus 22% for maintenance which equals $305,000 first year (and $55,000 each year thereafter) versus an annual cost of just $70,000 for SaaS for the same number of users? The SaaS option saves you $235,000 the first year. That money could be spent on engineers to build more products or sales people to help grow revenue. What if those engineers or sales people brought in well over $1,000,000 of additional revenue to your company? That is the opportunity cost. In this scenario, the opportunity cost of on-premise is $930,000 just for the first year. And it just keeps getting bigger every year thereafter - often dwarfing the financial TCO model. The scenario above shows a gross benefit to on-premise of $15K for years 2 and beyond. In reality, $15K per year doesn't begin to cover the annual IT costs for on-premise. The net benefit in TCO terms still favors SaaS. Conclusion: Enterprise software buyers know to compare the total cost of ownership (TCO) between SaaS and on-premise, and the savvy ones are looking at the opportunity cost difference as well. John Papageorge John Papageorge has worked at some of the biggest names in the high tech industry, launching products and programs for companies, such as Oracle, HP, Cisco, and Microsoft. John's passion for aesthetics and innovation has propelled him down various entrepreneurial paths. He was once co-founder of Standard Alliance, the San Francisco-based iTV application and production company, which created the first - and only - convergent initiative on behalf of the AOL-TIME WARNER merger. He also created Buzzphone, a mobile application company that allowed fans to receive voice messages from their favorite artists and athletes. In addition to all of these truly impressive and remarkable accomplishments, John collects accordions and is actively cultivating an image of 'a good-looking bad boy who plays by his own rules.' Post navigation ? Surprising Partnerships and Product Direction You May Also Like3 ways the cloud will change manufacturing When we founded Arena in 2000, it was uncommon (unique, even) to deliver PLM, and manufacturing software in general, as a cloud application. In fact, our main integration challenge was configuring our cloud BOM and change management system, Arena BOMControl, to work with the on-premise EDA, MCAD and ERP systems that our customers also use. Read more Arena and ERP Logic team up to provide an end-to-end cloud PLM / ERP solution Managing product data, from the first BOM to the final sign-off, is a top priority for our customers. And because of this, we are excited to announce our partnership with ERP Logic-an SAP channel partner and SAP Partner of the Year in 2010. http://www.olark.com (c) 2014 Electronic News Publishing - |