SaaS Will Accelerate The Convergence Of Consumerism With Enterprise

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Last week Stacey Higginbotham wrote on GigaOm
about how CISCO Chairman and CEO, John Chambers, sees an end to the
idea of business machines. She was quoting him from Cisco’s third
quarter earning conference call.

I carry the same two
devices in my business life and my personal life. A PDA and my Flip.
Another key takeaway is to understand [that] in my opinion, the
argument about consumer devices and business devices, as well as the
two architectures completely blurring, is over. The real question is
how do the CIOs in the enterprise business facilitate this change, and
that is from a number of recent meetings with some of the top CIOs in
the world. They get it. They understand the change and how they
facilitate it rather than slow it down.

Essentially,
he is arguing that the days of carrying two devices are over and we are
increasingly seeing more and more people using the same device for both
personal and business purposes.

In fact,
this is one of my favorite themes too. It is my opinion that Cloud
Computing, in general, and SaaS, in particular, will accelerate this
transformation. With the emergence of new breed of smartphones and
blackberries in the market, the mobile devices are getting used beyond
the traditional usage patterns. People are using it more and more for
web browsing, chat, social networking, voip, productivity apps, etc..
We are clearly seeing a new shift in the way people use mobile devices.
They are not just the communications devices any more. They are the
personal computers equivalent for the users.

As
more and more enterprises move towards SaaS, the only entry point for
their users will be the (mobile) browser. In fact, as the consumer SaaS
market matures and enterprise SaaS adoption takes place in full vigor,
the users will be trained to use the browser as the only entry point
for all their computational needs. When this happens, having a separate
device for both the personal and business use becomes completely
redundant. Users will prefer to carry just one device to manage all
their needs. In fact, this transformation might turn out to be a boon
for the businesses struggling to cut IT costs. It will not only help
them cut costs but also make it easy for their users. SaaS will play a
predominant role in this convergence and we are already seeing it
happen in the case of small and medium businesses.