Me-Too On SaaS and Mashups...

There have been a flurry of postings recently on Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) and Mashups.
Sandy Kemsley posted on this recently and folks like Robert McIlree were quick to pick up on her thoughts.

My two-cents on SaaS is that it poses an interesting angle for accessing external data and hosting opportunities (for me especially with disaster planning). The analysts seem to be pushing hard on this... For the mid-sector this may provide a try-before-you-buy opportunity. For the larger sector, not so sure. There needs to be a key differentiator with uniqueness/specialization of the service, performance, ease of engagement, or quality of the results. I will chime in with the others with my cautions on security, business continuity of your data and scalability. On the hosting matter, servers get bigger and bigger...and come in smaller and smaller boxes. What happened to doing real capacity planning and did not have to worry about what server and what hardware provider will demand manage and provision it new? Am I alone with this one?

FYI, the term SAAS has a both interesting and respectful meaning for Muslims .

Now on to Mashups...uh boy. Where's James McGovern and his B-Boy references... I think mashups are on a fast hype curve.

Bottom-line composing two or more heterogeneous services into a single solution is the job of every portal, enterprise integration project, and sometimes orchestration solution out there...Hello? Again...different play for the smaller sectors...but we really need to educate our customers on where wisest to spend their money. What is it that these providers have figured out that we haven't to deliver on the benefits of EA and SOA? Looking to be educated by someone with a mature thought who knows of a quality and worthwhile option. Please comment and help me out here.