Doug Harr has some views that might make on-premise software vendors shiver. As CIO of open-source database vendor Ingres, he's already predisposed towards cheaper alternatives (such as open source) rather than proprietary technology. With that in mind, Harr has embraced software as a service (SaaS) wholeheartedly. The company has added 10 SaaS apps to Ingres's internal technology portfolio during the past two and a half years.

Harr says the obvious benefits of SaaS adoption are cost and maintenance. However, he discovered, the ease of SaaS application integration is another selling point often overlooked by IT departments and their CIOs. At this point, Harr says, close to 100 percent of his critical enterprise applications are SaaS or open-source based.

"When we started, we raised some eyebrows and drew a few chuckles," Harr says. "But [SaaS] has worked and saved money. The on-premise model really is dead and it's the wrong direction to go."

Ingres was spun off from Computer Associates back in 2005. In a way, the company was starting anew, and as such Harr wasn't beholden to any particular software model. He could choose what software he wanted and how he wanted to deliver it.

With other executives at Ingres, he stressed the importance of easy maintenance and cheaper costs compared to on-premise software, and he says they quickly agreed with him. So he set about planning his technology architecture, which in some ways isn't entirely different than on premise software, Harr explains. You need to think about each department, what their technology needs are, and how best to create bridges so that those systems can talk with one another efficiently.

Where the fundamental difference lies, he says, is that the SaaS model allows you to shop for "best of breed" offerings: software that focuses on doing one thing very well. Most SaaS vendors don't rely as much on making themselves a one stop shop for all IT needs like traditional vendors. "I prefer a [SaaS] company that says, 'we know a type of automation, we do it well, and that's what we focus on,'" Harr says.

Won't this lead to a bunch of disparate applications, except now in a Web browser instead of a desktop environment? Harr says it won't, provided you plan carefully and make sure that the provider has built its applications on open standards.