There is a growing reliance of technology leaders on software-as-a-service (SaaS) tools to support software development, with 84% of IT leaders indicating that they depend on SaaS solutions.
Despite its promise of efficiency and scalability, SaaS adoption has not alleviated the challenges across the software development lifecycle (SDLC).
This is leading to heightened workloads and business risks, according to an Onymos survey of 300 leaders in application and software development, IT, and security.
According to the report, 65% of tech leaders consider software initiatives business-critical, yet nearly a quarter (25%) identified application performance as a major challenge.
Development (22%), quality assurance (20%) and maintenance (20%) remain the most arduous phases of the SDLC, with 78% reporting increased workloads for application updates over the past year.
Additionally, daily maintenance tasks consume significant resources, with 52% citing them as the predominant time sink.
Shiva Nathan, CEO of Onymos, explained the dilemma organizations face when relying heavily on SaaS tools.
“SaaS offers so much speed and convenience upfront that it’s hard to resist, but it’s clear teams are paying for that speed and convenience later on,” he said. “Technology leaders need to use the SaaS solutions that help them reach their long-term goals, not just the short-term ones.”
The study also underscores the risks of unaddressed software development challenges, including higher operational costs (53%), increased security risks (45%), compliance concerns (38%), reduced profitability (32%) and missed revenue opportunities (28%).
Nathan emphasized that SaaS adoption often exacerbates these risks due to over-reliance on third-party solutions.
“The SaaS model is broken,” he said. “If you’re giving away ownership and control of your products and services to third-party vendors, you’re making a strategic mistake.
He said he recommends technology leaders ensure they retain control of their data and avoid lock-in.
“Talk to your vendors about data portability and code export options,” Nathan said. “This is the bare minimum.
Another key issue raised in the report is the burden of maintaining applications, particularly as SaaS solutions proliferate across organizations.
Nathan highlighted SaaS sprawl as a significant contributor to engineers’ workloads.
“The more third-party integrations your product or service relies on, the more APIs your team has to manage, the more updates they have to test, and the more security vulnerabilities they have to mitigate,” he said.
He advised enterprises to start by auditing their existing SaaS portfolio to identify redundancies and streamline maintenance processes.
Low-code and no-code tools, often touted as a solution for simplifying development, were another focus of Nathan’s critique.
While these tools can be useful for non-critical projects, he cautioned against relying on them for complex, innovative initiatives.
“Non-mission critical projects, MVPs, tools for sales and marketing teams — that’s when you want to use low-code/no-code,” Nathan said. “But if you’re building complex, unique products and services, low-code/no-code still doesn’t work, and it will never work. You can’t innovate inside of a template, a box someone else built for you.”
The report also found that while 84% of technology leaders prioritize optimizing application development, fewer than half feel successful in achieving this goal.
Nathan pointed to the need for a paradigm shift in how organizations approach software development.
“Technology leaders have to prioritize ownership and control,” he said. “The SaaS model has normalized trading those things away. Security, agility, scalability — all those things flow from ownership and control over your own products and services.”
