Objectives of knowledge management

Challenges of deploying SaaS
Although the cost reduction arguments of SaaS are persuasive, what are the disadvantages 
of this approach? (The pros and cons are similar to the ‘make or buy’ decision discussed in 
Chapter 12.) SaaS will obviously have less capability for tailoring to exact business needs than 
a bespoke system.
The most obvious disadvantage of using SaaS is dependence on a third party to deliver 
services over the web, which has these potential problems:
● 
Downtime or poor availability if the network connection or server hosting the application 
or server fails.
● 
Lower performance than a local database. You know from using Gmail or Hotmail that 
although responsive, they cannot be as responsive as using a local email package like 
Outlook.
● 
Reduce data security since traditionally data would be backed up locally by in-house IT 
staff (ideally also off- site). Since failures in the system are inevitable, companies using SaaS 
need to be clear how back-up and restores are managed and the support that is available 
for handling problems, which is defined within the service level agreement (SLA).
● 
Data protection – since customer data may be stored in a different location it is essential 
that it is sufficiently secure and consistent with the data protection and privacy laws dis-
cussed in Chapter 4.
These potential problems need to be evaluated on a case-by-case basis when selecting 
SaaS providers. Disaster recovery procedures are particularly important since many SaaS 
applications such as customer relationship management and supply chain management are 
mission- critical. Managers need to question service levels since often services are delivered 
to multiple customers from a single server in a