Shark Bait

Knowledge Centers

Operating Systems

Networking & Internet

Mobile & Wireless

Security

Storage

Business Intelligence

Servers & Data Center

Computerworld Reports

Industry

See your link here

Mark Everett Hall

Sanity as a Service

SaaS would slash government waste

12 comments

TAGS:Metier, TimeTrade, USAspending
IT TOPICS:Government & Regulation, SaaS & Cloud Computing, Software

Visit the USAspending.gov Web site and type in software vendors' names in the search field to see how many tax dollars flow from your wallets into their coffers annually. Oracle picked up $191 million in 2008, CA $76 million, Microsoft $63 million and SAP $29 million. And if you type "software" in the search field you get a list of companies with the word "software" in their name (none of which are listed above) and the total runs to well over $5 billion.

Now try the experiment by typing in well known software as a service companies -- Salesforce.com, NetSuite, Axentis, and others -- and you get absolutely nothing. Well, full disclosure, ADP did manage to get $40,000 from the Defense Logistics Agency, but as it turns out, not for SaaS, but for "non aircraft components."

Governments could save taxpayers loads of money if they tactically embraced SaaS instead of doggedly using on-premises, perpetually licensed software. Instead, like Pavlov's dog salivating at the ringing of software vendors' bells, they invest in software for projects that fail at very high rates.

Raising shibboleth arguments about needing data security, privacy and reliability for on-premises software is nonsense in the face of countless miscues of federal, state and local governments to maintain control over their applications. SaaS vendors could do no worse and are likely to perform better than government entities because of vested economic interests.

Ed Mallen, CEO of TimeTrade Systems Inc., an on-demand scheduling service in Bedford, Mass., is optimistic that government officials will jump on board the SaaS bandwagon in about two years. And Douglas Clark, CEO of Metier Ltd. in Arlington, Va., whose Worklenz project portfolio is available in either an on-demand and on-premises model, says "Government end users are pretty hard to please. They expect a lot."

Clark, who has only had luck selling Metier's on-premises product to Uncle Sam, thinks SaaS will eventually make its way into government, but most likely from services managed inside the government from one agency offering its software and expertise to another.

I hope Clark is wrong about that. It strikes me as wasteful when secure, well-managed SaaS infrastructures already exist.

If President Barack Obama and his chief performance officer want to attack waste and inefficiencies in government, a good place to start would be dropping on-premises software where it's not needed and embrace SaaS where it makes sense.

Email this

Digg this

What People Are Saying

Add new comment

Any government search for

Submitted by John Deere on May 22, 2009 - 6:09 A.M.

Any government search for profit and someone always need to hide some issues... So corruption is universal "feature" of any government.

Reply | Report this comment

I supposed about such big

Submitted by AndreyM on February 4, 2009 - 2:50 A.M.

I supposed about such big abuses of power, but I have never could imagine, that they are so big!

Reply | Report this comment

As long as you don't need security

Submitted by Don S on February 3, 2009 - 11:25 A.M.

Governments are a lot like corporations, but there is one very profound difference. Governments, particulary the U.S. Federal Government, have a lot of data that absolutely cannot be compromised. That means maintaining complete control of not only the data, but all access to that data. That is not possible if that data is accessible via any hosted application or service.

Reply | Report this comment

I can see the newspaper headlines...

Submitted by motie38 on February 2, 2009 - 7:51 P.M.

Social Security checks delayed due to SaaS vendor network outage.
Johnny SS Inc. released details today on an internal system failure that caused Social Security checks to be delayed for almost a week. The SaaS company specializing in Government contracts has been hosting services for the Social Security Agency for the past two years, and still has 13 years left on it's contract.

Tax Dollars wasted in irrevocable SaaS contracts
Congressman Robert E. Lee revealed today that $42 Billion has already been spent on a government SaaS project that has been cancelled, but due to the contract with the SaaS vendor that does not expire until July 2032, another $128 Billion is expected to be spent. The congressman said "The project was originally slated to cost $240 Billion, so we're actually saving the taxpayer $70 Billion." Others are calling for an investigation, since the SaaS vendor is from Congressman Lee's home State.

Green cards passed out freely on Mexico City streets.
Julio Jiminez Hernandez Jr. was taken into custody today in Mexico City, after passing out almost a hundred thousand green cards to people who said they were headed for the U.S. This news came shortly after a SaaS vender which had contracted with the U.S. Immigration Service admitted their system had been hacked. "At first I was selling them for 50 pesos," said Julio, "but then I decided to give them away out of the goodness of my heart." A U.S. border official said "Julio's green cards are nearly indistinguishable from the real thing. And since when we run them through the system they check out, I seriously doubt we'll be able to recover very many of them."

Reply | Report this comment

Fearing change

Submitted by Mark Everett Hall on February 2, 2009 - 9:41 P.M.

Motie38's concerns, while humorous are, of course, ludicrous. Virtually all SaaS contracts are set for 2-3 years, which would limit taxpayer liabilities, as opposed to current software maintenance contracts, even with open source vendors, which can run much longer; and, of course, commit an agency to perpetual dependence on (often) inadequate software. At least with SaaS, you could change your service or go back to the old bad software that inspired change in the first place.

Green cards are already for sale on the streets in Mexico and elsewhere. So, again, I contend, SaaS vendors will do a better job than on-premises, perpetual-license (and open source) models work now.

And, I'm not sure how long Motie 38 has been around, but Social Security checks have been delayed many times in the past, despite excellent service from IBM and its mainframe systems.

Reply | Report this comment

It was meant to be humorous, but...

Submitted by motie38 on February 14, 2009 - 3:26 P.M.

where length of term for the SaaS contract is concerned, you presume the government will act rationally and obtain the same terms that a for profit business would. Given their current propensity to spend us into a hole we'll never be able to climb out of, do you really think you can count on that? I've become convinced over the last few weeks they really have an agenda to spend every last penny they can on social engineering projects, and destroy the US currency in the process. It seems as though their actions are purposely geared toward bringing this economy to it's knees. To what end? I have some ideas, but I'll let you draw your own conclusions.

If the US government were acting rationally, I agree SaaS could be a big money saver, and might even improve services, though I'm not convinced it would save as much as could using Free/Open Source alternatives wherever possible. But rather than an either/or, probably a combination of the two would be the best solution. The problem is, they're not acting rationally, in a patriotic Unites States of America Constitutional sense. And while my first inclination was to think they're acting out of a sense of panic, I now believe they're acting intentionally to undermine the Constitution and turn this into a socialist nation. And if they think spending us into the ground can do that, they're willing to try.

Reply | Report this comment

My two cents: I have been

Submitted by Anonymous on February 2, 2009 - 9:02 P.M.

My two cents:

I have been trying to figure out why roll-up-your-sleeves "problem solver" IT people find it impossible to resolve these types of issues when it comes to SaaS. Then declare that SaaS is unworkable for their situation.

For site installed systems, we in IT work until the wee hours to get vendor patches, read websites and Twitter each other until the problems are solved. But for SaaS, IT throws up their hands at the completion of reading the latest blogger article. IT appears to need more strength when it comes to demanding onsite audits of SaaS vendors, deeply investigate operational procedures, and require flexible exporting of data. Why is there this difference in how IT acts between onsite and SaaS solutions?

My guess is that implementation of SaaS requires a lot more management skills; being assertive with vendors, contract negotiations, writing Vendor Management Agreements, etc. and less technical skills. So what is really going on with these types of conversations is about who feels empowered to resolve SaaS vendor issues, just like we resolve premise based vendor issues. Technical people generally feel empowered to fix hardware and software, but not people management - which is exactly what SaaS problem resolution is all about.

I don't think Google, who will be in the papers and could severely impact their business if they have a significant email outage, is really less concerned with reliablity and security than internal IT departments. If your potential SaaS vendor is not meeting your standards, they should not win your business. But you need to work with them. The 'I can do it better myself' argument is not a good place to hang your hat for the long term. SaaS is simply more efficient and will eventually win anyway.

Lets step up the IT involvement with SaaS and make it work to the standards we all want.

PS - Want a fun place to work as an IT technical person where your skills will be in alignment with the business? Go to work for a SaaS vendor...

Reply | Report this comment

what about data portability?

Submitted by Charles Robinson on February 2, 2009 - 5:09 P.M.

SaaS is compelling but I'm still not sold on data portability. Say the government goes through all the trouble to get people using a hosted solution and the provider tanks overnight. Where is the data and how do they get to it?

A possibly better solution would be moving toward internally hosted web-based solutions. There are plenty of free alternatives out there that will replace Exchange, Windows Server, SAP, Oracle and IBM Websphere. Simply moving to OSS on servers would be a huge step toward reducing licensing costs and be less disruptive while still keeping the data in house.

Reply | Report this comment

Portability

Submitted by Mark Everett Hall on February 2, 2009 - 6:52 P.M.

Most SaaS vendors will give your data upon request. But they will generally do so in a basic format--tab or comma delimited, for example. So, you've got your data and you can feed it into a new application.

You need to be certain that your SaaS contract spells this out. And you need to be certain that you can test this after a period of time to assure that it works on your end.

Also, you should also assure that if the SaaS vendor goes belly up you get the data promptly. And be sure your vendor does data backups. That is, when you request samples of your data, get it from recent backups not pulled from production systems.

Reply | Report this comment

No way! No how!

Submitted by Olde Sarge on February 2, 2009 - 12:34 P.M.

SaaS is a commercial paradigm that is not well suited for any business model that requires cast iron security or continuous availability. Besides, most government IT is not connected to a publicly available network and that is not going to change in the foreseeable future.

The best model for government to reduce costs is to use open source only. Yeah, that's right, not-for-profit software that is openly maintained by a broad community of users and easily customizable for tailored government needs. That will slash tens of billions of dollars of unnecessary spending from the federal, state, and local government budgets as well as eliminate an entire class of government fraud perpetrators.

Government-to-government business needs to be restricted to stand-alone government LANs, WANs, or tightly managed VPNs. Publicly accessible information should be hosted separately from the working networks of government. Any cross-domain movement of data must be strictly audited to prevent inadvertent release of information to unauthorized access as well as to protect the government working networks from compromise.

Sorry, there is no open access model for software profiteering that protects the integrity and privacy needs of government IT. Besides, as you have noted so well, government procurement of software needs from private business is a huge waste of our taxes, revenue better spent providing infrastructure, security, or public services.

Reply | Report this comment