ARC Thoughts

Software as a Service (SaaS)

With the resurrection of internet bubble once again, which is affectionately called Web 2.0. There has been increasing focus on services. Everyone is talking about services, how they will revolutionalize the software industry, etc. In my humble opinion this is a hype, just like what we have seen during the first DotCom boom. In the peak days of the DotCom, what happened was, there were these new companies which offered online grocery ordering with free home delivery. Some analysts and journalists who were quick to jump on the hype were already writing obituaries for traditional (brick-&-mortar) grocery retailers. They thought why would a customer take the pain to visit a store when they can get the groceries delivered home for free? Well!!, we know what happened in reality. Those newcomers are no where to be found, the traditional grocery retailers started offering online ordering capabiltiies combined with in-store pick up or complementary home delivery based on the size of the order. So suddenly consumers had a choice and also were able acumulate loyalty rewards via different channels. This experience was consumers love, they like to visit stores to touch/feel the products and order online to save on tax or delivery charges or to find he best deal.

So when the dust settles down that's exactly what will happen for services. So you'll see a combination of software and services. There will always be a need for offline functionality in most of the applications, which can only be fulfilled with some software on the host. So what will happen is there will be a place for software and there will be a place for services.

As a first step working with a partner I wrote a white paper on SaaS in Retail. You can read and download the white paper here.

More to come in this space. Drop me your feedback..