It seems pretty clear these (Salesforce.com, SuccessFactors) SaaS companies could be just as profitable as SAP if they were prepared to dial back significantly on their growth. SaaS companies spend money hand over fist because they’re engaged in a land grab. The big players like SAP are extremely slow getting to SaaS for various reasons. As long as these companies can grow like this, they should keep investing heavily in it. The likelihood an on-prem vendor will dig these customers back out again seems very low. Customers being taken this way are probably lost for good to the SAP’s of the world.
(excerpted from Smoothspan blog post)