Vendor Reservations, a Full-fledged SaaS ERP, and User Recommendations
P.J. Jakovljevic - January 17, 2007

How About Full-fledged SaaS Enterprise Resource Planning?

The previous notes in this series have left us in a quandary: Why has software-as-a-service (SaaS) not been fully embraced by the full-fledged manufacturing enterprise resource planning (ERP) world? Sure, the SaaS Showcase features over a dozen SaaS ERP solutions, but such companies as NetSuite, Intacct, Plexus, Workday (a new venture from former PeopleSoft founder Dave Duffield), or Everest Software are not really forerunners of deep and versatile manufacturing capability. Also, their SaaS-only offerings are not appealing to the many conservative enterprises that tend to prefer the reserve option of going on-premise as required. In fact, many such environments exhibit interest in testing on demand applications in a much narrower functional scope as a ramp-up for full-blown use down the track. One would need to see the likes of SAP, Oracle, Infor, Lawson, Epicor, QAD, IFS, Cincom, Exact, etc. wholeheartedly jump on the bandwagon to really believe the traditional ERP vendors have taken up the SaaS religion. One may want to note that vendors like SAP have a number of customers for whom the vendor (or one of its partners) hosts a manufacturing ERP environment. While we may not consider this SaaS, we can at least recognize it as a step in that direction...