News for hackers. Stuff that matters.

A comment on Companies fret as costs soar for software subscriptions (2019). Parent comment

Re:Companies fret as costs soar for software subscriptions (... by fhbdukfrh on Thursday March 05, 2020 @01:08PM (#22496223)
How often do you build in house tooling or applications that have no ongoing operating commitments? It's upfront capital investment plus generally unpredictable maintenance vs. More predictable but maybe higher operating expenses
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Companies fret as costs soar for software subscriptions (... by Silhouette on Thursday March 05, 2020 @01:17PM (#22496331)
How often do you build in house tooling or applications that have no ongoing operating commitments?

Absolute zero ongoing commitments? Very rarely.

Negligible ongoing commitments compared to the outsourcing alternative? Many, many times.

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Companies fret as costs soar for software subscriptions (... by nirvdrum on Thursday March 05, 2020 @02:24PM (#22497105)
I don't know if more predictable is all that accurate. SaaS providers change functionality and UX regularly and that often breaks workflows. Then you have the ones that shut down or get bought out and then substantially change their offerings. Then there are those services that would have been private to an intranet, but are now public, and they get compromised.

I don't think it's clear-cut. Some SaaS has worked out remarkably well for me and others I wish I had just built the thing in-house. Also, few providers give a way to actually get your data back out in a usable fashion, so you tend to get locked in without substantial cost to back out.

[ Parent | on HN ]