The progression of construction business software like enterprise resource planning (ERP), project management, accounting and emerging disciplines like field productivity to the cloud delivers substantial benefits. But not all construction software accessible in the cloud is truly cloud software. Here, Jonathan Gross, CEO and attorney with the software consultancy and law firm Pemeco helps us understand the key distinctions that will keep contractors from investing in software that is near the end of its lifecycle, saddling themselves with implementation headaches or getting hit with unanticipated costs or complexity.
Here, we discuss the different could provisioning models, including
- On-premise solutions with a cloud option, or hosting
- Single tenant construction software
- Multi-tenant construction software
What are the upsides and downsides of each, and how can contractors do the due diligence required to know what they are getting?
IRONPROS: When it comes to someone subscribing to a hosted solution, which in the old days we called managed services, what are some of the different things that should tip people off that that's what they're looking at, as opposed to like a single tenancy? And do you think that they're going to be able to still run that thing like five, 10 years down the road?
JONATHAN GROSS: Yeah, you may be able to run them for a while, but I guess the question you have to ask yourself is if it is going to get in the way of my business value. So things to think about are ...
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NOTE: We quote this Kellblog post in this video. Dave Kellog is an essential follow on Twitter (@Kellblog) for anyone who wants to understand the microeconomics behind software-as-a-service (SaaS).