Cloud or SaaS?

In response to my earlier post Apoorv  has pointed that there are questions on viability of SaaS model. My take is that SaaS is a commercial model whereas Cloud computing is an architectural approach. One can deploy cloud computing in an enterprise need not be as SaaS. In the same vein one can deploy SaaS with traditional tools, over proprietary infrastructure without cloud computing.

I feel Chrome has hastened the cloud up-take in enterprise. SOA has been found useful for integration of apps and sharing of services. SOA also promotes a vision of composite apps, where ultimate control of composing apps is put in end user's hand. SOA has not realised that vision yet. In my opinion cloud computing is a required enabler for this composite apps vision propagated by SOA. Without Cloud computing combined with SOA,  realising the composite application vision is very difficult - if not impossible. 

I also believe cloud may have positive impact on SaaS as a model. SaaS as commercial model may have viability issues. Again, I dont have enough data points, but my gut feel is a pure commodity applications can be successfully deployed in SaaS model. Trick is to make many users to accept it as commodity without any customisation. Does such pieces of commodity applications exists within enterprise application space? I believe so. But carving them out and putting them in SaaS mode is a challenge more in terms of organisational  inertia than a technology challenge. Without sufficient scale SaaS model is indeed doomed. The question is who buckles first, orgnisational intertia to change or the surviving capacity of SaaS providers.

So does cloud computing has future? Definitely. Does SaaS model have a future? May be, if SaaS providers can build the required scale by somehow overcoming orgnisational inertia.