The emerging world of Software-as-a-Service is seeing new local players compete against large American multinationals, claimed Australian software developer Gmg Software.

Guillaune Greffe, CIO at Gmg, claimed the cost effective entry fee and rental model of SaaS is highly suited to small and medium businesses, in particular start ups that are looking to reduce total cost of ownership.

“The question remains how small Australian players can compete against large American providers,” he said.

According to Greffe, the approach Gmg uses is to get as close to providing all the services a customer requires on-top of providing the software. “We have developed a framework to tailor our SaaS product to our customer’s needs. We start with a generic product and then for a particular industry we tailor it to their needs,” he said.

Geffe claimed bigger corporations can’t do that. The approach that some other SaaS providers have taken to give flexibility to their products is the ability to connect modules which allows third party software to connect, rather than tailor the solution to their particular needs.

“They use stock standard software and that is all the customer gets. The pricing structures for the modules can also get expensive. It might be a cheap entry fee, but some organisations request customers also pay a monthly fee and that can get expensive for a small business,” he said.

Geffe believes the SaaS model will be widely adopted by small businesses in Australia.

"These companies are focussed on running a business, not on IT. Outlaying significant amounts of money for a server and associated software, installation, backup and recovery plans are way outside the scope of running their core business,” he said.

The future of SaaS is with providers becoming an organisation's virtual 'IT' department and offering more than just a connection to some software over the internet, he claimed.

Gmg Software is a Queensland-based sofware developer focussing on providing
solutions to small and medium businesses.