This may seem counterintuitive, but I think Oracle's Larry Ellison gets enterprise SaaS, while Gartner is still struggling with the concept.

This week Gartner announced, "A recent survey...has revealed that although SaaS is more mainstream and less controversial than ever before, many customers are underwhelmed by their current experience of it and sense that SaaS is not quite the panacea it often promised to be."

This is about as insightful as saying, "drivers are underwhelmed by their cars." What drivers? Ashley Babbra or Miss Daisy's driver? What cars? A Yugo or a BMW?

I've ranted about the the glaring differences between modern SaaS and fake SaaS / real ASP before. Considering the garbage vendors are touting as "SaaS" these days, Gartner's survey, though vague, doesn't necessarily surprise me.

But by reporting survey results like this, Gartner is simply confusing the industry and perpetuating vendor misdirection. The survey data would have been enlightening and useful if the term SaaS was somehow qualified. Having seen these Gartner surveys like these before, I assume no attempt was made to define SaaS.

On to more twitter chatter. @pinkerdavid exclaimed, "90% will maintain or expand SaaS & Gartner thinks it's, 'not a ringing endorsement'!"

@appirio_nara said, "Gartner's survey shows...maintaining/increasing SaaS spend. Not true of most other IT spend."

What level of expansion does it take for Gartner to consider it "a ringing endorsement?" With many legacy enterprise software vendors only growing in the single digits or running for cover, I'd imagine they'd kill for 2x customer satisfaction and renewal numbers.

So what does Oracle and Ellison have to do with all of this? After reading a May 18, 2009 (I know, that was light years ago) Network World article by Jon Brodkin titled, "10 Cloud Computing Companies to Watch"

I got to thinking (please reserve your commentary). Two of the ten companies, NetSuite and Salesforce.com, were either founded by or significantly funded by Ellison. I may not have been the first to connect these dots, but it does seem that the principle behind this strategy is lost on many of the enterprise software pundits and vendors even today.

Keep in mind, Ellison has publicly denounced the SaaS model while investing millions into arguably the two most successful modern SaaS vendors EVER. Is he crazy? Crazy like a fox. Despite Oracle's "SaaS" missteps, Ellison was a genius to diversify his interests. He protected the Oracle cash cow that might never succeed at SaaS while getting in on some of the most successful SaaS action ever.

Here's what Gartner needs to understand and what Ellison seems to have understood a decade ago. The only way to be successful with SaaS and deliver benefit to the customer is to build it from scratch. A legacy breaks the SaaS model in so many ways, from incongruent culture to incompatible technology and everything in between.

For better or worse, SaaS has become a lot of things to a lot of people. I'd maintain that modern SaaS, not old software stuck in a datacenter with a shiny new subscription license thrown in for good measure, is what business succeeds with today. Unfortunately, I think Gartner's survey had a heavy population of users who were sold the latter.