For 2013, I am looking at new ways to increase revenue within the confines of my technical staff to support it. Does anyone currently promote SaaS? If so, what are your experiences? Is it as straight forward as selling licenses and letting a Cloud service provider support it?
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Re: SaaS (Software as a Service)
I would classify it as being thrown under the bus. I know this because I have had a good close view of the underside of this particular bus. The service person gets nothing resembling training on a wide variety of software, then is asked to provide a professional level of expertise on technical aspects.
If you enjoy unhappy looks of techs that get to look stupid on a regular basis, then you'll be right in your element.
See the tracks across my face? I know this bus. =^..^=If you'd like a serious answer to your request:
1) demonstrate that you've read the manual
2) demonstrate that you made some attempt to fix it.
3) if you're going to ask about jams include the jam code.
4) if you're going to ask about an error code include the error code.
5) You are the person onsite. Only you can make observations.
blackcat: Master Of The Obvious =^..^= -
Re: SaaS (Software as a Service)
Thanks for your reply. To restate what you said, your Service Dept was tasked to support SaaS but the reality of trying to satisfy the customers expectation of service was well beyond the next to nothing technical support you rec'd from the SaaS provider you worked with.
I now feel it is important to first properly review the support capabilities of the SaaS vendor and choose one wisely. It appears the Sales pitch of the benefits of SaaS and the reality of supporting SaaS are not the same.
In this case I am talking about scanning to a Document Management System (DMS) where all of the hardware and software is managed in the Cloud by a third party. My job would be to sell the licenses and make the MFP scan to the DMS. I guess that if I sell the licenses, the customer will expect me to provide tech support on the software, which I am not keen to commit to.Comment
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Re: SaaS (Software as a Service)
If you're selling it to them, they will look to you for all support issues on it. Often I've found cloud services still to be much more hype than anything else. There are plenty of instances of outages even by Amazon and other firms handling these services. I'd much rather have an onsite method of storage with the cloud as backend available for archival data. You're looking at a very thin line overall: the cloud provider has a vested interest in keeping support as much in their sphere as possible while just giving out enough information to get your techs on the line with them and go through very basic potential issues. Furthermore, with the added variables of the client's internal network, ISP, and the cloud provider's uptime being parts of the equation it quickly gets out of the range of the technician.
You'd be better served selling some good capacity servers for onsite data retrieval rather than relying on a third party to do the dirty work.Comment
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Re: SaaS (Software as a Service)
Don't even remind me of Document Mall: interesting idea but terrible execution!Comment
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Re: SaaS (Software as a Service)
Thanks for the responses. I think you prevented me from stepping into a pile of poo!Comment
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