More and more companies are waking up from the 20th century, realizing that their on-premises, packaged, waterfall paradigms no longer play in today’s SaaS, agile world. SaaS (Software as a Service) has taken over, and for good reason. Companies (and investors) long for the higher valuation and increased margins that SaaS’ economies of scale provide. Many of these same companies realize that in order to fully benefit from a SaaS model, they need to release far more frequently, enhancing their products through frequent iterative cycles rather than massive upgrades occurring only 4 times a year. So, they not only perform a ‘lift and shift’ into the cloud, they also move to an Agile PDLC. Customers, tired of incurring on-premises IT costs and risks, are also pushing their software vendors towards SaaS.
SaaS Migration is About More Than Just Technology – It is An Organization Reboot
But, what many of the companies migrating to SaaS don’t realize is that migrating to SaaS is not just a technology exercise. Successful SaaS migrations require a ‘reboot’ of the entire company. Certainly, the technology organization will be most affected, but almost every department in a company will need to change. Sales teams need to pitch the product differently, selling a leased service vs. a purchased product, and must learn to address customers’ typical concerns around security. The role of professional services teams in SaaS drastically changes, and in most cases, shrinks. Customer support personnel should have far greater insight into reported problems. Product management in a SaaS world requires small, nimble enhancements vs. massive, ‘big-bang’ upgrades. Your marketing organization will potentially need to target a different type of customer for your initial SaaS releases - leveraging the Technology Adoption Lifecycle to identify early adopters of your product in order to inform a small initial release (Minimum Viable Product).
It is important to recognize the risks that will shift from your customers to you. In an on-premises ("on-prem") product, your customer carries the burden of capacity planning, security, availability, disaster recovery. SaaS companies sell a service (we like to say an outcome), not just a bundle of software. That service represents a shift of the risks once held by a customer to the company provisioning the service. In most cases, understanding and properly addressing these risks are new undertakings for the company in question and not something for which they have the proper mindset or skills to be successful.
This company-wide reboot can certainly be a daunting challenge, but if approached carefully and honestly, addressing key questions up front, communicating, educating, and transparently addressing likely organizational and personnel changes along the way, it is an accomplishment that transforms, even reignites, a company.
This is the first in a series of articles that captures AKF's observations and first-hand experiences in guiding companies through this process.
Answer these questions first...
Any company about to launch into a SaaS migration should first take a long, hard look at their current product, determining what out of the legacy product is not worth carrying forward. Is all of that existing functionality really being used, and still relevant? Prior to any move towards SaaS, the following questions and issues need to be addressed:
Customization or Configuration?
SaaS efficiencies come from many angles, but certainly one of those is having a single codebase for all customers. If your product today is highly customized, where code has been written and is in use for specific customers, you’ve got a tough question to address. Most product variances can likely be handled through configuration, a data-driven mechanism that enables/disables or otherwise shapes functionality for each customer. No customer-specific code from the legacy product should be carried forward unless it is expected to be used by multiple clients. Note that this shift has implications on how a sales force promotes the product (they can no longer promise to build whatever a potential customer wants, but must sell the current, existing functionality) as well as professional services (no customizations means less work for them).
Single/Multi/All-Tenancy?
Many customers, even those who accept the improved security posture a cloud-hosted product provides over their own on-premises infrastructure, absolutely freak when they hear that their data will coexist with other customers’ data in a single multi-tenant instance, no matter what access management mechanisms exist. Multi-tenancy is another key to achieving economies of scale that bring greater SaaS efficiencies. Don’t let go of it easily, but if you must, price extra for it.
Who Owns the Data?
Many products focus only on the transactional set of functionality, leaving the analytics side to their customers. In an on-premises scenario, where the data resides in the customers’ facilities, ownership of the data is clear. Customers are free to slice & dice the data as they please. When that data is hosted, particularly in a multi-tenant scenario where multiple customers’ data lives in the same database, direct customer access presents significant challenges. Beyond the obvious related security issues is the need to keep your customers abreast of the more frequent updates that occur with SaaS product iterations. The decision is whether you replicate customer data into read-only instances, provide bulk export into their own hosted databases, or build analytics into your product?
All of these have costs - ensure you’re passing those on to your customers who need this functionality.
May I Upgrade Now?
Today, do your customers require permission for you to upgrade their installation? You’ll need to change that behavior to realize another SaaS efficiency - supporting of as few versions as possible. Ideally, you’ll typically only support a single version (other than during deployment). If your customers need to ‘bless’ a release before migrating on to it, you’re doing it wrong. Your releases should be small, incremental enhancements, potentially even reaching continuous deployment. Therefore, the changes should be far easier to accept and learn than the prior big-bang, huge upgrades of the past. If absolutely necessary, create a sandbox for customers to access new releases, but be prepared to deal with the potentially unwanted, non-representative feedback from the select few who try it out in that sandbox.
Wait? Who Are We Targeting?
All of the questions above lead to this fundamental issue: Are tomorrow’s SaaS customers the same as today’s? The answer? Not necessarily. First, in order to migrate existing customers on to your bright, shiny new SaaS platform, you’ll need to have functional parity with the legacy product. Reaching that parity will take significant effort and lead to a big-bang approach. Instead, pick a subset or an MVP of existing functionality, and find new customers who will be satisfied with that. Then, after proving out the SaaS architecture and related processes, gradually migrate more and more functionality, and once functional parity is close, move existing customers on to your SaaS platform.
To find those new customers interested in placing their bets on your initial SaaS MVP, you’ll need to shift your current focus on the right side of the Technology Adoption Lifecycle (TALC) to the left - from your current ‘Late Majority’ or ‘Laggards’ to ‘Early Adopters’ or ‘Early Majority’. Ideally, those customers on the left side of the TALC will be slightly more forgiving of the ‘learnings’ you’ll face along the way, as well as prove to be far more valuable partners with you as you further enhance your MVP.
The key is to think out of the existing box your customers are in, to reset your TALC targeting and to consider a new breed of customer, one that doesn't need all that you've built, is willing to be an early adopter, and will be a cooperative partner throughout the process.
Our next article on SaaS migration will touch on organizational approaches, particularly during the build-out of the SaaS product, and the paradigm shifts your product and engineering teams need to embrace in order to be successful.
AKF has led many companies on their journey to SaaS, often getting called in as that journey has been derailed. We've seen the many potholes and pitfalls and have learned how to avoid them. Let us help you move your product into the 21st century. See our SaaS Migration service