Ben Worthen has a good article at his Business Technology blog at the Wall Street Journal entitled “Big companies want software that works.”  In the article, Ben discusses the decision criteria that big companies use to select technology solutions and why they are increasingly open to on-demand services to solve their needs – provided they work.

I commented on the site and have included it here as well.

## My comment ##

For global brands, on-demand software platforms provide far too much value to ignore; particularly, as this article alludes to, when real-time collaboration is necessary.

As an on-demand vendor, Kinaxis is witnessing the migration from traditional on-premise systems to online delivery of our supply chain management solution. The improved multi-enterprise accessibility and availability makes it easier (and in many cases, makes it possible where it wasn’t before) to collaborate with global team members and partners.  This is an important capability when dealing with the increasing volatility of supply and demand and having to reconcile it on a daily basis.

You’re right to point out that data security has historically been one of the biggest obstacles for adoption. But when managed with dedicated hardware, software and physical security; online services can be as, or even more, secure than on-premise servers.  In fact, many companies have higher expectations for an on-demand service around security, reliability, etc. than what they have with their on-premises implementations, so we’ve had to prove that repeatedly.  Good on-demand providers can deliver the reliability, security, and capabilities they need while completely reducing the need to procure hardware, install and manage upgrades, manage the systems infrastructure, etc.

The interest is growing to the point that the fact that we are an on-demand service is viewed as a distinct advantage to many of our prospects faced with growing pressures on IT staff and budgets.  To this point, Kinaxis signed with one of the world’s largest aerospace & defense manufacturers, certainly one of the most security-conscious companies around, for our on-demand service.

As global collaboration becomes a necessity for companies, we see on-demand services not as a trend, but a unique solution.

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Tags: On-demand (SaaS), Supply chain management
Posted in On-demand (SaaS)
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