Moving into the clouds

Transcription

1 Moving into the clouds A White Paper on Software as a Service (SaaS) Table of Contents Introduction... 2 Examples... 2 Benefits... 2 Savings on cost... 3 Saving time... 3 As the service evolves, you enjoy real-time benefits... 3 Less time worrying about infrastructure... 3 Community of integrators... 3 Drawbacks... 4 How can data security be ensured?... 4 Who controls the data?... 4 What happens if the SaaS application goes offline?... 5 What about access when I'm not online?... 5 Sources of Information... 5

2 Introduction It's one of the newer "buzz" phrases in an industry littered with them. "Working in the Clouds" or "Cloud Computing" or any variation on the idea that data should be shifted, managed and stored in a place distant from your hard drive. In fact, it's distant from the terminal at which you might be sitting at any particular moment. That's because in a "cloud" state more formally known as "Software as a Service" your data is hosted by a third party, the vendor. Google Docs is a relatively well known application of the SaaS trend. When most people think about word processing, data entry, etc, the suite of products that most often springs to mind is Microsoft Office. Late last year, revenues indicated that Microsoft holds a 95 percent share of the productivity-software market. That software, and all of the content created with it, is hosted, managed and saved on your hard drive. By comparison, all documents created in Google Docs are hosted and saved on secure servers managed by Google. All of the basic functionality of the software is similar. Where it lives is what's changed. As trends go, this is one that's arrowing up. Most of the services you need to effectively run your business are available in the clouds. Examples Project Management: Basecamp, Clarizen Accounting: Xero, Intaact Invoicing/Expense Tracking: Freshbooks Human Resources: QuickArrow Customer Relationship Management: NetSuite, Saelsforce.com Productivity Software: Google Docs, Zoho Marketing Communication: Vertical Response Center Pro And there are many more. Hundreds and hundreds more, actually. You can find a more complete listing at Of course, none of that matters if you don't have a reasonable understanding of the benefits and drawbacks associated with porting your business functionality into a hosted space. Benefits The benefits of subscribing to a SaaS product over purchasing a software license or using an on-premises product are: Savings on cost Saving time As the service evolves, you enjoy real-time benefits Less time worrying about infrastructure Community of integrators - 2 -

3 Savings on cost SaaS applications are delivered on a subscription basis, and that works to the advantage of the user as it disperses outgoing costs rather than requiring that they be paid up front. You can also count on lower IT costs when using SaaS. Not only do you avoid the implementation costs associated with on-premises software, but you also enjoy the added benefit of leaving IT professionals to work on projects other than software upkeep. Obviously, there are plenty of things to do. You also win when it's time to scale. For obvious reasons, increasing your breadth and depth is much easier on the bottom line with SaaS applications. Data is stored in one place and it's very easy to give multiple users access to that data. Saving time With the elimination of labor-intensive implementation, the deployment of SaaS applications becomes a much faster, smoother reality. As the service evolves, you enjoy real-time benefits Subscribing to SaaS applications means that you will receive software updates as they happen. No longer will you be left waiting for the next release to properly enable your licensed software. With SaaS, you will be at the front of the new release pack in perpetuity. Less time worrying about infrastructure Here are the things your organization is free from devoting excessive resources to when using SaaS applications: Acquiring and maintaining the server infrastructure necessary to operate software in-house Providing the equipment necessary to guarantee security and reliability of those in-house systems The labor associated with upgrading those systems Community of integrators At the close of the 2008 Office 2.0 Conference in San Francisco, the top-line message from organizers and other Cloud Computing thought leaders was clear: Work together or beware the consequences. In other words, to maximize their presence in the marketplace, applications would be well-served to work together to improve integration and increase user friendliness. And that creates a victory for you and your business

4 Drawbacks Certainly there are legitimate concerns related to the question of whether or not to cross over into a hosted software space. As with any shift in methodology, managing these questions will be imperative if SaaS products are to truly proliferate. How can data security be ensured? Who controls the data? What happens if the SaaS application goes offline? What about access when I'm not online? How can data security be ensured? Asking this question is not to say that data security should be taken any less lightly than for licensed software. Ensuring that your information is protected is a core responsibility, no matter how your applications are being delivered. That said, there are certain buckets of information you'd be wise to fill as part of your investigatory research into SaaS products. How secure is the facility in which your data is housed? Are security measures in place 24 hours a day, 365 days a year? On what type of infrastructure is your data hosted? What are the virus protection arrangements? Who is doing vulnerability scans? How often? How often is data backed up, and where are the backups stored? What is the company's privacy policy? Who controls the data? When you're using SaaS, the data you create will be stored on the vendor's server. That makes a lot of people nervous. But perhaps it doesn't need to. Ask the vendor these questions to allay any concerns: Can I export my data, and will it be usable when I do so? What is the process for backing up data? How often is it done? How do you store the backed up data? - 4 -

5 What happens if the SaaS application goes offline? Respectable SaaS vendors go to great lengths to ensure there are safeguards in place that will protect the availability of their product. For instance, at Palo Alto Software, we have taken a multitude of precautionary measures to make certain that Center Pro is user ready as often as possible by implementing the following: Extensive monitoring: All ECP servers are aware of each other, and thus able to detect and report errors Server backup: If something were to go haywire with Center Pro, we are just a click away from initiating a new instance of EC2, the servers to which we subscribe for hosting our service. Quick deployment: Center Pro is designed to deploy quickly from a script, which makes the introduction of an error into the process extremely unlikely. One way to build in peace of mind is to get some assurance of time online from the vendor and build it into the agreement. Other questions providing useful information should be focused on the following: Do you have hardware redundancy, and are the teams in place to monitor the SaaS website? Are there backup generators in the case of power failure? Does your system provide quick scalability? What about access when I'm not online? For many individuals and organizations, this issue lies at the heart of SaaS application adoption. Even if you can be assured that your data is safe and that every precaution is taken to ensure its availability while you're online, what do you do about the issue of offline access? This problem is not new and many applications designed to solve it have come and gone. A recent unveiling called Drop Box ( does a good job of simplifying what you're likely looking for: A web-hosted interface Availability across multiple computers Seamless syncing of data created offline Sources of Information Software as a Service, Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia "The Truth About Software as a Service," CIO.com, May 21, 2007 "SaaS will change your business," Phil Wainewright, ZDNet Blogs, May 10, 2006 "Software as a Service is hitting its stride," Network World Blog, April 17, 2007 "Software as a Service: How far can the pay-as-you-go approach take you? Norm Alster, CFO.com, June 22,