[jherskovic]

I deeply disagree with the author. Costs are predictable from one year to the next, true; but you are beholden to the vendor, and the vendor may even effectively hold your data hostage.

Vendors can and do get greedy, and if you're deeply integrated with them then untangling those integrations and migrating elsewhere becomes a big job in and of itself. I've had my share of experiences where enterprise SaaS vendors try to squeeze their customers after they effectively become a single source.

I am not at all opposed to SaaS, and use it at my organization quite effectively. But you have to choose carefully. In many cases, the vendor will become a partner, and it can become a pretty abusive partnership.

On the other hand, when you own it, at least you KNOW you own it.

And this isn't even taking into account the quality of the product itself. We have vendors that, like others complain here, just delight in changing UIs and offered functionality left and right, deprecating APIs with two months' notice. We have others who behave like grownups.