Limitations

I've noticed a trend lately.  In working with various organizations in the early stages of evaluating SaaS, I'm hearing vigorous defense of limitations. "We can't go to the cloud because our business is so unique."  "We can't consider cloud because our data is too complex to migrate." "We can't entrust our data to a 3rd party."  While there are plenty of additional reasons, I'm sure you've noticed the two important words forming the trend:  "We can't".

One of my favorite authors is Richard Bach.  Yeah, the guy who wrote "Johnathan Livingston Seagull", "Illusions", and "Travels with Puff".  More evidence that I'm an old hippie at heart.  Bach deals with the metaphysical and the spiritual.  It can be some rather deep and mind-bending stuff.  But he also throws out some pearls that stick with the reader.  One of his pearls that stuck with me: "Argue for your limitations and, sure enough, they're yours."  Meaning that those who vigorously defend their limitations rarely move forward in significant ways.  It's the opposing force to innovation, disruption and improvement.

If you're part of an organization considering a move to SaaS, the strategic factors to weigh involve elements like building value through improving the balance sheet and/or lowering operational costs; increasing product or service share and/or quality; increasing agility through reductions in business process or development cycle times.  In other words, "better faster cheaper".  If SaaS delivers for you in those areas, then the limitations simply become challenge to be dealt with on the road to achieving the value offered by SaaS.

"Argue for your limitation and, sure enough, they're yours."  When you begin to hear those two words, "We can't", that's exactly what you're doing.  Don't do it.  Step back and change your perspective.