CIOs, CTO give thumbs-up to software as a service

SANTA CLARA, Calif. -- CIOs and a CTO serving on an IT issues panel at the Software 2005 conference here on Wednesday gave a thumbs-up to software as a service, open source, and collaboration technology.

The executives provided their perspectives on new technologies and concepts.

Software as a service drew a good review from David Watson, CTO of Kaiser Permanente, who said the concept assists with provision of non-core competencies that are nonetheless needed. He cited CRM for use by salespersons as an example.

“Software as a service gives me more flexibility in how I have to have [non-core services],” Watson said.

Rather than spend $30 million to $40 million and take a year to deploy a Siebel Systems application, Watson said Kaiser opted for salesforce.com, which provides online-based CRM. “We did a deal with salesforce.com to bring focused capabilities to our sales force and we’ve done it in four months at less than $1 million,” he said.

Open source software, meanwhile, has enabled Unilever to set up shop in Iran, where the company does $25 million in business each year, without violating U.S. technology restrictions, said Neil Cameron, Unilever CIO.

“We absolutely adhere to American law and American pressure, so we have to find another way of running our business in Iran, and guess what? Open source is the [way of] doing it,” Cameron said.

Cameron cautioned that open source is “never free.” It still must be supported and accommodate other “wraparound” technologies, he said.

BP is pleased with open source but is careful about where the company uses it, said John Leggate, vice president of digital business at BP. “The quality seems to be tremendous,” he said.

Watson said Kaiser is not much of an open source user, however. “We’re very comfortable with it; it’s just not where we’ve put our energy today,” he explained.

In deciding on technology investments, BP looks for unique value and has found it in technologies such as collaboration and visualization, Leggate said.

“We’re always looking for the next new thing to help us,” Leggate said.