As SaaS tends to become very popular, Gartner decided to provide fact checks for five of the most common SaaS myths. The aspects that have been analyzed include the cost-effectiveness of this delivery model, as well as implementation procedure, the ability to interact with on-premises applications and the SaaS configuration capabilities.

“In recent years there has been a great deal of hype around SaaS,” stated Robert DeSisto, VP and distinguished analyst at Gartner. The representative of this company further explained the appearance of the SaaS assumptions: “As a result, a great number of assumptions have been made by users, some positive, some negative, and some more accurate than others. The concern is that some companies are actually deploying SaaS solutions, based on these false assumptions.”

First of all, Gartner made a comparison between the cost-effectiveness of the SaaS model and the on-premises software. While it is believed that SaaS is better than the latter, from this point of view, Gartner demonstrated the contrary. However, this myth is true in the majority of the cases in the first two years of development. This is due to the fact that the TCO (Total Cost of Ownership) costs less during this period. The support infrastructure of this delivery model requires minimal investments, and such is the case with the licensing investments, too.

Next, Gartner investigated the myth according to which SaaS is as expensive as the utility model. According to the company, this statement is false in most of the cases. Saas vendors tend to dub themselves utility-based providers. This resulted from the belief that that customers pay only for what they use, which proves to be wrong, eventually. Commonly, the SaaS vendors and the customers need to agree on a predetermined contract.

Gartner also analyzed the implementation speed of the SaaS delivery model in comparison to the on-premises software. The simple-requirement SaaS seems to be faster, but this rule does not always stand. In some cases, the SaaS vendors claim that the implementation requires 30 days, despite the fact that the deployment might take 7 months or more. The difference between these time spans usually decreases once with the complexity of the SaaS process.

The fourth myth refers to the possibility to integrate SaaS with data sources or on-premises application. As Gartner pointed out, this assumption is false since there are actually two methods of integrating SaaS. The first one is real-time integration based on Web Services and the other one refers to batch synchronization. However, the ones interested in integrating this delivery model may also use a method that is based on the prior two. More specifically, the third procedure implies a Web service trigger that is related to an event that appears in the SaaS service. Integration at UI level is also possible and is based on mashups.

Last, but not least, Gartner wanted to check the compatibility of this service with various requirement configurations. The company demonstrated that SaaS is not exclusively made for simple requirements, as it is commonly believed. Gartner states that this service presents an elevated degree of adaptability to diverse configurations. In order to increase the customization capabilities, some offer application platforms as a service.