Not that long ago I worked as part of web development teams building custom websites for clients large and small.
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Clients would brief us on their requirements, an estimate and
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Internet secrets
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This is a blog on how online is changing, what SMEs should be doing online – and what your web developers won’t tell you. Lead bloggist Craig Reardon has been working with Australian SMEs on their online requirements since the web gained critical mass here in 1995. More recently he opened the independent web services firm for SMEs, The E Team.
While I certainly agree with the SaaS model, it isnt a one size fits all approach. I know that it is a growing market and soon there will be a solution for just about everything. At the moment however, our firm is seeing two types of customers.
1. Has a general requirement, lets say a CRM system. We can host and support Sugar for them for a small cost (sub $100) setup ready to go. An existing open source solution. Everyone wins.
2. Customer has a very specific requirement with the need for apis to other software, in other words a custom solution where there is no SaaS that exists to help. So we need to build them something that fulfills their requirements.
If there is a SaaS, open source or otherwise, that exists, our aim is to recommend that to the client first. Failing that, then we need to look at either a hybrid or full custom as a last resort.