Computerworld online published an interesting article titled: Helping small businesses choose between On-demand and On-premise software. Though the focus is general, it reiterates the main advantages of on demand talent management and eRecruiting for small to medium businesses:

Lower cost of entry: “avoid the large upfront investment required for software licenses and hardware… reducing the hassles of ongoing IT maintenance.”

No readiness issues: “on-demand … dramatically reduces the technical burden … enabling businesses to devote more of their time to higher-value activities.”

Shorter time to productivity: “…because on-demand deployments are typically preconfigured … they are relatively speedy.”

Support for mobile users: “Whether employees are in the office, at home or in a hotel room in another time zone, access to an on-demand application is identical.”

We heartily agree with these main points: Lower costs. Less burden. Faster. Anywhere, anytime. No surprise, since we offer Taleo Business Edition.

But regardless of our agenda, the article’s argument for on-premise software just doesn’t hold up:

Data accessibility and ownership? Domiciling your data is nice. But it also means responsibility. For smaller businesses, on demand can provide a higher level of state-of-the-art hosting, security, and backup than their IT departments are able to provide.

Transactional volumes? Internet bandwidth and shared processing resources are legitimate variables, but truly scalable multi-tenant on demand architectures are designed to support a higher level of usage than small business networks. At Taleo, we processed more than a billion transactions for 750,000 users in Q2 2006 alone.

Less downtime? Although on-premise removes some remote-connectivity issues, Taleo has achieved 99.9% on demand uptime. How many hiccups has your on-premise email server had this month? How many steps does it take to access your servers on the road?

More seamless hardware/software integration? Complete control over your hardware and software environment might feel nice, but with Web Services APIs and hardwired integrations, it’s a legacy illusion.

Lower ongoing costs? On demand requires subscription fees, but are clearly an advantage over on-premise license, implementation, and ongoing maintenance fees for a greater return on investment. Want to switch on demand providers? Go ahead. It’s much less costly than changing ERP applications.

Many of the largest and most complex global companies with their sophisticated IT environments have chosen Taleo for on demand talent management. The choice for a small business without those kinds of IT resources is even simpler. Explore Taleo Business Edition to learn more.