Smoothspan has this excellent post talking about SaaS as the enabler to cross the chasm between early adopters and everyone else.
Excellent points are made in the post but more emphasis needs to be placed on the one imperative issue – SERVICE.
Through user-centric design and taking a non-geek look at the core problem the user wants solved, SaaS is ideally placed to help cross the chasm. but this is where it gets tricky – most SaaS businesses are run by geeks. Geeks are, by nature, bad at taking an “eye of the (luddite) customer” view.
And that’s where we come back to governance – I contend that for SaaS enterprises even more than for traditional ISV’s a non-technical perspective is imperative. his perspective needs to be at the highest levels and that’s when indepedent directors prove their mettle. My presentation at BarCampChristchurch is all about SaaS and I’ll try and address the governance issues as well.
Ben Kepes is an analyst, an entrepreneur, a commentator and a business adviser. His business interests include a diverse range of industries from manufacturing to property to technology. As a technology commentator he has a broad presence both in the traditional media and extensively online. Ben covers the convergance of technology, mobile, ubiquity and agility, all enabled by the Cloud. His areas of interest extend to enterprise software, software integration, financial/accounting software, platforms and infrastructure as well as articulating technology simply for everyday users. 
Um, how can you be certain that the people at the barCamp will want to hear what you want to say … isn’t it the nature of a barCamp that you only find out on the day?
Well a representative grup frm them has already indicated that it is an area of interest for them and givn the currency of SaaS n NZ, due largely to the xposure of Xero, I’m going out on a limb and figureing they’ll be keen
Fairy ’nuff?