I've identified a niche where clients' needs aren't being met very well by their current software application supplier. I'm considering setting up a Saas company to provide a far more effective service at lower costs. But I need to work out advantages/disadvantages of following this route:
Advantages: I can lever my knowledge over the years of most points in the product development lifecycle - design, development, testing, implementation, support etc. Hosting stuff in data centres (whether on specified servers or in the cloud) is fairly cheap, and coders, let's face it, can be obtained fairly cheaply on an ad-hoc basis (although the plan envisages that sales, implementation and support consultants will need to be more permanent). The functionality provided will be far better than currently exists, and every thing will be selected so as to enable future scaleability and/or new functionality.
Disadvantages: The selling side of this frightens me - I've seen too many examples of "taking a horse to water but you can't make him drink". Some companies in this field may not get the concept of not having to maintain their own servers and storage. So all our data isn't on our site? What happens if your computer goes down/blows up? Also, security and authentication of authorised software users will need a lot of thought and maintenance. Possible "dirty tactics" from the incumbent software supplier. A fear that the data won't be secure from industrial espionage.
They are just a few thoughts I've had so far. Can anyone add to the pros/cons? Mercy buckets.
