nathanfish.com

This Wired article touches on the issues associated with SaaS and data portability. The problem extends into the enterprise further, with significant business decisions being based on the lack of data portability. Business will many times build a solution in-house, investing significant time and money in a non-core business component because of the importance of the data long term or the strategic nature of the data. Data portability is far from being solved and while much of the discussion is around consumer data, we should not forget the significance of data portability in B-to-B based SaaS business models. Businesses talk about lock in as a strategy, but is that really a business strategy? The goal of a business is to offer value to the end user at an acceptable price. Lock in is nothing more than a feeble attempt to retain customers. In fast it most likely does more to prevent them from becoming a customer in the first place. A quick look through the Data Portability member list shows the limited representation of data portability thought leaders in the B-to-B SaaS space.

Tagged as Data Portability + Categorized as Business, Data Portability