They all have SaaS. Have done since the 1970s. Meaning they have software licenses with renewing service-level agreements and support contracts.
The difference is the mainframe is now AWS.
They understandably don’t want to host outside their own infrastructure.
Can you host on their infrastructure?
That I find is the biggest hurdle.
Beyond that it is the usual switching cost set of questions. You have to find the problems their current solution offers and sell a unique new value proposition only available on the new platform.
But then, What stops SaaS providers from Hosting in their own environment?
With Modern day Containerization technologies and orchestration layers, I believe it is not as difficult as it used to be - to be infra agnostic. A lot of large Enterprises are now - investing in their private cloud (AWS, Azure etc.)
IMHO, it is much beyond the Hosting part (which is mostly applicable during the installation stages).
There are questions about,
- Accountability in case of failures.
- Continuous Support and Customizations
- Is there a Dedicated Support team etc.
- more ...
> But then, What stops SaaS providers from Hosting in their own environment?
You mean why SaaS providers are reluctant to provide their stack on-premise?
If your main tech is providing a web daemon that "just works" it is simpler (cheaper) to provide (install, update, configure) it on your (the SaaS-company's) infrastructure, as otherwise you have to support integrating your SaaS into the security domain of your customer which is very non-trivial (that's why you often see Team-Support and certain variations of authorization and authentication in the higher-priced plans).
I understand that many customers would like that but I also understand that it is harder (more expensive) to support for SaaS companies. I wonder how long GitLab will support their dual-approach using .com and the self-hosted, on-premise variant.
The difference is the mainframe is now AWS.
They understandably don’t want to host outside their own infrastructure.
Can you host on their infrastructure?
That I find is the biggest hurdle.
Beyond that it is the usual switching cost set of questions. You have to find the problems their current solution offers and sell a unique new value proposition only available on the new platform.