I was planning to only post monthly updates of interesting articles we come across and publish within our reads folder, but after reading this article from LIMSletter, I just couldn't wait.
The whole article is a worthwhile read, but the highlights for me are the following snippets :
“According to industry research, 31.1% of software projects are cancelled before they are completed. Of those software projects which have been completed, over half (52.7%) have taken twice as long or have cost twice as much as originally expected. When on-premise software applications are fully deployed, the maintenance and management costs can be ten times the original license fee.”(1) Indeed, the failure rate of commercial LIMS solutions is commonly estimated to be as high as 60% by industry analysts such as Strategic Directions and ArcWeb."
“More than 80% of scientific labs do not use a professional LIMS. Not because they don’t want to, but because implementing a LIMS has been too difficult, time consuming, and costly. That ‘perfect storm’ of daunting factors includes commercial-off-the-shelf LIMS as well as home-grown solutions.” Instead, according to Kent, most labs still rely on informal systems, such as paper-based notebooks, Excel spreadsheets, or tracking systems cobbled together using tools such as Microsoft Access or FileMaker Pro"
"One LIMS vendor has stated that “the main difference between a subscription-hosted LIMS and a direct purchase ‘on-site LIMS’ is the initial cost and total cost of ownership (TCO)”.This is not the full story. The most critical difference lies not in how it is priced, but in the underlying code and how the SaaS LIMS was developed."
"In order for a SaaS LIMS to succeed, not only must the SaaS vendor invest in a comprehensive SDP, but they must also ensure the implementation of security technologies and certification programs that govern data center operations and personnel. These certification programs can include SAS 70, ISO standards, HIPAA, Sarbanes-Oxley, etc. The Statement on Auditing Standards (SAS) No. 70, for instance, is the authoritative auditing standard that judges a service organization’s controls and safeguards over their information technology and related processes. It is important that the SaaS LIMS vendor be able to produce SAS 70 service auditor reports which validate that the service offering conforms to the guidance requirements and thus delivers a secure service."
"Fortunately, if the service does not meet the lab’s needs, it can be cancelled. The burden of success rests not with the customer but with the SaaS vendor to deliver reliable, scalable, secure services. This enables the laboratory to focus on the attributes of the SaaS solution and determine how well those features and functions meet the lab’s needs, and not on implementation, management and support."
This resonated strongly with us at Bika Lab Systems, as we have been offering SaaS since inception, as our LIMS has always been web-based rather than web-enabled. And we offer it for all our products; Bika LIMS, Bika Interlab, Bika Wine, Bika CMS and soon Bika Water.
This article has also been published in our Reads folder, which is RSS enabled.
More about Bika Lab Systems' SaaS offerings.
