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Guest View: Why you need a cloud and SaaS exit strategy

By Stefan Andreasen

May 3, 2011 — (Page 1 of 2)
While enterprises and small businesses alike are swiftly moving their critical business applications and data to the cloud, they often forget to plan their exit strategy. That’s right: How do they get their data and apps out of the cloud when, for example, compliance issues arise or on-premise economics improve, and how do they switch from one SaaS provider when the existing provider goes out of business, stops performing as expected, or a better/cheaper provider comes along? Any of these scenarios could happen to any company, and will happen more often as the market shakes out.

I recently attended a CIO event where the hot discussion topic was how, when and why we should move our applications to the cloud and SaaS. What surprised me was that the main concern was less about how to move applications and data into the cloud and more about how to get them out of the cloud.

Exit considerations were a real barrier for many to even enter the cloud. I heard questions like these:

What if security or legal compliance dictates that we need to regain full control of our data? Can we do that?

Can we move to another SaaS provider when that becomes more cost-effective?

What happens if our provider goes out of business?

What if our provider starts having unacceptable downtime periods? Can we quickly move to a more reliable provider?

Will providers’ interest in high stickiness one day have us locked in to a point where we have no exit options at all?

If we take part in a merger or acquisition, how can we ensure that we can consolidate on a single set of SaaS providers?

These are all very good questions. I was surprised by how important a cloud and SaaS exit strategy was in the discussion. I have some suggestions on what exactly businesses can do to keep (or regain) control over their data and providers.

For obvious reasons, cloud and SaaS vendors have little interest in customers ever moving away from their applications. They want to be as “sticky” as possible and grow their businesses. For example, how many times do you hear about customers moving away from Salesforce? I’ve never heard of any, but I have heard many say that SaaS vendors jack up their prices over time, and even Gartner is reporting that SaaS applications may not be competitive on a TCO basis after two years.

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