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But giving this service is the main product of salesforce, therefore intrinsic quality measures (like security) are more important to their management (for thei

But giving this service is the main product of salesforce, therefore intrinsic quality measures (like security) are more important to their management (for their well understood need for customer trust), than if you were developing an in-house product. In the latter case intrinsic quality of a biproduct of your operation would not matter to your management, because they primarily think in order to give the best quality to the customers of the company's product, and the intrinsic quality of that product matters to them (eg. to use BPA free materials for the rubber ducks they manufacture). This is why they will feel spending on security of the in-house development unjustified, until a major security breach happens.

ProAm 10y ago
> therefore intrinsic quality measures (like security) are more important to their management Right, I agree, but just because it is important doesn't mean they are good at it. And there is the fact that there is now likely 1 or 2 people attending to 1000 customers, than 1 or 2 people in house tending to 1 customer.
- phxrsg 10y ago
  Except that security engineer : customer ratio doesn't make sense as a metric. Those 1000 customers all need the same thing - for their data in the cloud to be secure. They don't have differing security requirements that pull the engineers apart in different directions. So it really is a comparison of 1-2 security engineers vs 100-200 security engineers.
  - ProAm 10y ago
    > Those 1000 customers all need the same thing This is completely not true, many customers often need specific custom tailored security for business specific needs (This is something most startup SaaS developers dont realize or care about because they are usually just starting development and care about growth and base product). This is where the problem lies, you paint with a broad brush and get the 80%, the other 20% is a nightmare usually. Most the time the 80% has holes in it too, like we saw here with SalesForce. Whenever Im architecting a system, I always tell the execs you can either pay for it now (going on-prem) or pay for it later (with Saas) because at the end of 5 years you always end up paying just about the same, its just a matter of where. With payroll, downtime, customer losses, hardware, DR, wasted time with project managers from your SaaS providers. Id always rather have control and know my system than depend on someone else's hire who behind a curtain of three, four or five nines of marketing jargon. It's always a pay me now or pay me later situation.

ProAm 10y ago

> therefore intrinsic quality measures (like security) are more important to their management Right, I agree, but just because it is important doesn't mean they are good at it. And there is the fact that there is now likely 1 or 2 people attending to 1000 customers, than 1 or 2 people in house tending to 1 customer.

phxrsg 10y ago
Except that security engineer : customer ratio doesn't make sense as a metric. Those 1000 customers all need the same thing - for their data in the cloud to be secure. They don't have differing security requirements that pull the engineers apart in different directions. So it really is a comparison of 1-2 security engineers vs 100-200 security engineers.
- ProAm 10y ago
  > Those 1000 customers all need the same thing This is completely not true, many customers often need specific custom tailored security for business specific needs (This is something most startup SaaS developers dont realize or care about because they are usually just starting development and care about growth and base product). This is where the problem lies, you paint with a broad brush and get the 80%, the other 20% is a nightmare usually. Most the time the 80% has holes in it too, like we saw here with SalesForce. Whenever Im architecting a system, I always tell the execs you can either pay for it now (going on-prem) or pay for it later (with Saas) because at the end of 5 years you always end up paying just about the same, its just a matter of where. With payroll, downtime, customer losses, hardware, DR, wasted time with project managers from your SaaS providers. Id always rather have control and know my system than depend on someone else's hire who behind a curtain of three, four or five nines of marketing jargon. It's always a pay me now or pay me later situation.