• by Karlene Lukovitz  @KLmarketdaily, December 12, 2007

True or false: Hosted solutions will never give you the control you need to integrate customer dta, touchpoints and multi-channel campaign management.

Answer: False, according to this morning's three technology panelists.

Both Ryan Deutsch, director of strategic services for StrongMail, and Dave Hendricks, VP, market strategy for Datran Media, stressed that today, it's not the limitations of hosting solutions that determine their viability for a given company; it's the company's own business policies and operational guidelines.

"It's really a matter of the company's flexibility, or lack thereof," said Deutsch.

"Business rules drive the decision," agreed Hendricks, who noted that a company that's highly focused on keeping proprietary data in-house "will instantly think 'on-premise,'" whereas companies already comfortable with using outside creative and other resources are likely to be quite comfortable with a hosted system solution.

"It's also got a lot to do with the technical wherewithal" of the company and its marketers--the bandwidth and the staff resources, stressed Cliff Seltzer, CEO, Pure Send.

As the industry matures, many companies are starting to go one of two extremes: bring the whole technology solution in-house, or have nothing in-house, he noted.