Agile and SaaS Combine to Deliver Value

There is a fundamental transformation occurring in the software industry that is reshaping how our stakeholders expect IT to deliver value.

Using the same Lean manufacturing principles championed by Dell and Toyota, we need to provide more value, sooner, in a more manageable flow that enables our business to respond faster to new opportunities and competitive threats. But how?

By switching to a delivered model for apps, Software as a Service (SaaS) is stoking our user's expectations about business velocity and TCO. Meanwhile, seamless collaboration across departments, organizations and time zones is the new business imperative, and requires that we make full use of modern services architectures and data sharing platforms. Taken together, these changes will have an immense impact on both software organizations and our users. What should a software executive do?

Create an Agile Organization

Given the uncertainties that software organizations face, the single most important competitive advantage is agility - the ability to rapidly adapt to new information and add new capabilities to our business offerings. In many cases, companies will have to break out of their traditional organizational silos and adopt new ways of developing, delivering and managing applications.

How Can SaaS Help?

The ubiquity of high bandwidth network access and the maturity of services protocols and architectures have enabled SaaS to emerge as the preferred way to operate many applications. Why is that? Simply put, SaaS addresses head-on our stakeholder frustrations with delayed deployments, failed implementations, and the inability to match costs to utilization and value. It directly supports the distributed nature of our workforces and enables collaboration with partners and contractors across corporate boundaries. And SaaS frees up IT skills, infrastructure and finances to focus on higher-value business opportunities.