Customers.com Technologies

On-Premise Is So Passé

By Ronni Marshak

Cloud computing is seductive—even the name is fluffy and brings up images of angels lying about with harps. But it is also real business. And it is a much better choice for most organizations than on-premise implementations of software solutions. In her insightful perspective, Sue Aldrich looks at some of the very compelling reasons why you should aim for the clouds:

• In ecommerce search, the cost for setting up on-premise search and merchandising is 50 times more than SaaS set up.


• While the vendor of on-premise software gets paid whether or not the software is ever used, the SaaS provider is paid based on each client’s success.


• In on-premise implementations, it is quite common for businesses to be at least one release behind because there is no resource to install new releases. By contrast, in the SaaS realm, software is updated with no effort from IT.


• Most businesses aren't likely to have the skills on hand to ensure reliability, security, and performance of your new application (or many of your existing applications). By contrast, your SaaS provider will have people on staff who really are security experts, really do understand the application, really do know how to monitor and manage it, really do know how to improve its performance.

Sue points out that SaaS has become a mainstream business purchase. However, surveys reveal that the IT teams in the vast majority of companies who have bought into the cloud are unaware of those software purchases. "Clearly," she points out, "SaaS is a business purchase, not a technology purchase, and the solutions often stay under IT's radar—no budget, no resource, no effort."

And now that SaaS is so widespread, it is changing the face of the software industry for good. Customers will embrace SaaS because of the rapid deployment, the reduced overhead for support and management, and the low implementation and upgrade costs. As a result, on-premise software providers who aren't moving to the cloud are in a very risky position and only the largest companies with the largest IT staffs will stay planted on firm on-premise ground.

Five Reasons to Put Your Business in the Cloud
How SaaS Is Changing Ecommerce and the Software Industry, and What You Should Do About It
By Susan E. Aldrich, Sr. VP and Sr. Consultant, Patricia Seybold Group, April 14, 2011

Aldrich Review of Certona Resonance Recommendations

Last week, we published the sixth evaluation of a recommendation engine, product, or service. You can use these engines to improve both the sales effectiveness and the personalized relevance of the offers you make to customers who visit your Web site, and/or with whom you interact via email. Many of these offerings, like Certona's Resonance, are SaaS offerings. So they're low overhead and easy to integrate. You see results quickly.

Susan Aldrich has evaluated Avail, Baynote, Loomia, Omniture (from Adobe), RichRelevance, and, last week, she provides an in-depth evaluation of Certona’s Resonance. All of these evaluations are compared against Sue’s Recommendation Engine Evaluation Framework—a framework you can use to do your own evaluations.

You'll find the Resonance Recommendations service running on over 250 Web sites, including Guess, Lillian Vernon, Personal Creations, Petco, Redcats USA, and Staples.

Certona Resonance Recommendations
Automated Optimization Balanced with Granular Control
By Susan E. Aldrich, Sr. VP and Sr. Consultant, September 30, 2010

Investing in Personal Recommendations

By Susan E. Aldrich
Sr. VP and Sr. Consultant, Patricia Seybold Group

Recommendations are hot—just ask the vendors of recommendation solutions. Recommendations are hot—according to the potential buyers we surveyed early this year. All of our respondents are interested in deploying recommendations at some point, and almost half plan to deploy in the next 18 months.

What are recommendations for? That's a simpler, and possibly harder question. Our respondents have clearly heard the message that recommendations help revenue and improve the customer experience. Interestingly, most North American respondents also see recommendations as a tool for personalization—for the user experiences of both customers and employees. Europeans, famously less exuberant [though not, as we see from the financial news, more rational] think the jury is still out on personalization.

Exuberant Americans will take their recommendation technology any way it's served: home grown, commercial on-premise software, or SaaS. Europeans, who shipped most of their cowboys westward over the past three centuries, do not want any home grown software, thank you very much; leave that "do it my way" impulse to the cowboys. Our European respondents really just want recommendations technology the way technology is supposed to be delivered, via commercial on-premise software. That SaaS thing, hmm, not so sure about that. This reluctance is a shame—what could be better than having a vendor striving to win your love and esteem daily? Even after you sign the contract? The beauty of SaaS, with the loving client care, ease of implementation, and low up-front cost will win the skeptics over eventually.