I enjoyed the 100% SaaS session yesterday, but have to say that I felt a bit unfulfilled in the end. We all had lots of fun with the preparation for the panel. Doug Harr's view that 100% SaaS means that your whole IT infrastructure simplifies down to a wireless router in your communications closet is certainly a provocative one.
We had lots of spirited discussion on what we saw as the boundaries (none of us think 100% SaaS is truly realistic today, particularly when you think about desktop software, personal productivity, telephony, file sharing, data warehousing, etc.), but all of us are seeing more and more companies, including our own firms, at 80% or 90% SaaS, and we all are getting tremendous benefits from this.
The questions from the audience took us more into the current state of SaaS than into what we think the future looks like, and what we know the industry needs to do to move the needle more and more toward 100%.
Here is some additional coverage: