SaaS Risk Reduction

With SaaS, there is absolutely no reason to stick with one provider. For example, I can store all my files in Syncplicity and either send them to Google Docs or open directly with Zoho Docs. This is the beauty of SaaS and with further adaption of Open Standards (about which I will talk further in my future posts), interoperability, data portability, etc., the idea of using a single provider or keeping all the eggs in one basket becomes old fashioned.

This is the sixth post in the SaaS Risk Reduction Series. For a change, I am planning to highlight a problem faced by one of the SaaS customers and explain how it could be done differently based on my suggestions in this series. Zoli gave me a link to one of the threads in Joel on Software Forum. In the thread, a frustrated SaaS user described his/her ordeal with Google Apps for Domains Free edition. Let me quote his story here.

I started using the free version Google Apps a little over a year ago for one of our intranets. Luckily it was an intranet and not the main site! I guess it wasn’t entirely luck. Management would never have let us use it on the main site. Anway, we used the shared calendar, email for a certain group, Google docs and a few other things.

For the most part things worked well. A few weeks ago it was time to renew the domain, and as the admin I promptly paid it using Google checkout.

Shortly afterwords the domain expired on the day aniversary date and we were totally hosed.

All his attempts to solve the problem frustrated him to the core and he was in a desperate situation

At this point, I’m ready to cry. What have I done to be stuck in this kafkaesque place.

Before I proceed with my post, lemme do a plug here. This is exactly the reason why SaaS users should subscribe to Cloud Avenue and visit regularly to read our posts. In fact, the basic premise behind the SaaS Risk Reduction Series itself is to help users avoid situations like the one above.

Follow the series @ http://www.cloudave.com

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