Traditionally large enterprises have always acquired licenses and integrated applications with a well articulated approach. This also involves detailed planning which involves multiple decision makers from the IT department to the CFO’s offices. All these decisions are taken after careful budgeting which is often a function of annual or quarterly spends and often related to bottom lines in the balance sheet.
The advent of Software-as-a-Service over the past decade has seen mixed reactions from enterprises. While CFOs love the idea of opex model of spending and not owning license and infrastructure, legal and IT departments have mixed opinions.
Biggest worries have been around security and where the data resides. However adoption has been far and wide for SaaS applications in the enterprise.
However enterprises adopting Software as a Service (SaaS) applications can encounter various challenges. While SaaS offers numerous benefits, such as cost-efficiency and scalability, it also presents certain hurdles that organizations must address. Here are some common hurdles and we also present how Netzary resolves some of these challenges.
Integration Complexity
: Large enterprises often have complex IT ecosystems with numerous legacy systems and on-premises software. Integrating new SaaS applications with existing infrastructure can be challenging. Ensuring seamless data flow and compatibility can require significant effort and resources.
Netzary has one of the most experienced systems integration teams with an understanding of several enterprise stacks and legacy applications. We help customers interoperate their legacy applications with new age stacks such as various SAAS vendors from Zoho to Microsoft.
Data Security and Privacy
: SaaS applications involve storing sensitive data off-premises, which raises concerns about data security and compliance with data privacy regulations like GDPR or HIPAA. Ensuring the security of data stored in the cloud and during transmission is a top priority.
Netzary offers consulting around security and compliance as a standard offering. Our consultants and auditors can help CIOs prepare a road map for rolling out a SaaS application considering all aspects of security and compliance standards. We offer CASB solutions and DLP solutions so that SAAS data stays where it is supposed to.
Customization Limitations:
SaaS applications are typically designed to be standardized and easy to deploy. However, large enterprises often require customizations to meet their specific business needs. Balancing customization with the benefits of SaaS can be tricky.Netzary has a team of developers with expertise in API interoperability, creating middlewares, Zapier integration among others. Apart from these Netzary has developers with excellent understanding of legacy platforms including SAP, Microsoft, Oracle, various open source platforms and many more.
We also have a strong development team with experience with modern web and mobile application stacks such as Flutter,Django, Node.js, React, Next.js. Whether building an extension on or integrating legacy systems our team can deliver,
With all these strengths we diminish the disadvantages around limitations of customizations
Scalability Issues
: While SaaS offers scalability benefits, ensuring that the SaaS provider can scale alongside the enterprise's growth is crucial. Inadequate scalability can lead to performance issues and downtime. Most SaaS platforms are designed for 3X to 4X the number of users.
Vendor Lock-In: O
ver time, an enterprise may become heavily dependent on a specific SaaS vendor's ecosystem. Switching to another vendor or transitioning back to on-premises solutions can be costly and challenging, leading to vendor lock-in.
Netzary offers customers guarantee on protection from vendor lock-ins. We offer services not just in migrating to any SAAS platform from a legacy application, but also offers migration away to a competition platform.
Cost Management:
SaaS subscriptions can lead to unpredictable costs, especially when usage scales up. Managing and optimizing SaaS spending can be complex, requiring organizations to continuously monitor and adjust their usage.
Netzary offers a Service Level Agreement which offers an extremely transparent costing model for all customers.
Service Reliability:
Enterprises rely on SaaS providers to maintain high levels of service uptime and availability. Any downtime or disruptions in service can have a significant impact on operations.
Netzary offers Service Reliability and uptime at 99.99% for all services which is better than average on premises hosted models.
Compliance Challenges:
Enterprises in regulated industries (e.g., finance, healthcare) face additional challenges in ensuring that SaaS applications comply with industry-specific regulations. This includes data retention, auditing, and compliance reporting.Staying compliant with evolving data protection and privacy regulations can be challenging. Enterprises must continually adapt their SaaS usage to remain compliant. As mentioned earlier Netzary offers consulting as a standard practice, and this covers all compliance related issues or shortfalls.
User Adoption and Training:
Large enterprises often have a diverse workforce with varying levels of tech proficiency. Ensuring that employees can effectively use and adopt new SaaS applications may require comprehensive training and change management efforts.Every implementation from Netzary is backed by an expert training the customer teams. We offer extended training sessions on demand for all customers irrespective of sizes at additional costs.
Data Governance and Migration:
Managing data across various SaaS applications can be challenging. Establishing consistent data governance practices, including data quality, access controls, and data ownership, is crucial.
Netzary offers data pruning services to ensure veracity, consistency and accuracy of customer data before data migration. All data stored is compliant to GDPR and other standards.
Performance Optimization:
Ensuring optimal performance of SaaS applications, especially in situations with high user concurrency or complex workflows, may require performance tuning and monitoring.
All software and customizations including creation apps and extensions are tested with industry standard application performance monitoring and management tools at Netzary. This ensures performance are fine tuned for all SaaS applications we deliver.
To address these challenges, large enterprises often need a comprehensive strategy that includes careful planning, thorough due diligence in vendor selection, robust security measures, ongoing monitoring, and adaptation to changing business and regulatory landscapes. Additionally, seeking the expertise of consultants or cloud service providers can help navigate these challenges effectively.