Software-as-a-Service market only continues to grow, presenting a more and more efficient and reliable business model. According to Gartner, by 2011 25% of new business software will be delivered as SaaS. This SaaS boom makes more and more companies that have never before even considered moving to SaaS-type business model, make decisions in favour of adopting it. Howevever, as always with large and popular projects, the essence and the very milestones get trivialized, you get a wrong picture of it and end up somewhere totally different from what you planned.

William McKnight has a recent entry in his blog uncovering the essence and how-tos of the process of selecting a SaaS vendor.

The 3 hallmarks or selling points of SaaS he names are:

1) no IT involvement,
2) pay-as-you-go with little upfront cost
3) the vendor takes all responsibility for infrastructure and upgrades – those invasive and non-value-added activities.

And some rules of thumb to keep to when selecting a SAAS vendor/solution:

1. Check the value proposition of the application.
2. Ensure the ability to expand the core functionality of the application beyond the provided functionality (scalability).
3. Don’t sabotage IT plans.

For more details check out William’s post.

There’s an insightful article by Mike Karp on ILM (information lifecycle managememnt) and the six steps of implementing a successful and efficient policy on data storage, verification, classification and management. Mike identifies the following steps to follow to ensure your ILM efficiency:
Stage 1. Preliminary
1) Determine whether your company’s data is answerable to regulatory demands.
2) Determine whether your company uses its storage in an optimal manner.

Stage 2. Identifying file type, users accessing the data and key words used.
1) Make a list of regulatory requirements that may apply. Get this from your legal department or compliance office.
2) Define stakeholder needs. You must understand what users need and what they consider to be nonnegotiable.
3) Third, verify the data life cycles. Verify the value change for each life cycle with at least two other sources, a second source within the department that owns the data (if that is politically impossible, raise the issue through management), and someone familiar with the potential legal issues.
4) Define success criteria and get them widely accepted.

Stage 3. Classification (aligning your stakeholders’ business requirements to the IT infrastructure).
0) Identifying the business value of each type of data object, i.e. understanding three things: what kind of data you are dealing with, who will be using it and what its keywords are.
1) Create classification rules.
2) Build retention policies.

When you engage with the vendors, make sure to understand their products’ capabilities in each of the following areas:
* Ability to tag files as compliant for each required regulation.
* Data classification.
* Data deduplication.
* Disaster recovery and business continuity.
* Discovery of compliance-answerable files across Windows, Linux, Unix and any other operating systems you may have.
* Fully automated file migration based on locally set migration policies.
* Integration with backup, recovery and archiving solutions already on-site.
* Searching (both tag-based and other metadata-based).
* Security (access control, identity management and encryption).
* Security (antivirus).
* Set policies to move files to appropriate storage devices (content-addressed storage, WORM tape).
* Finding and tagging outdated, unused and unwanted files for demotion to a lower storage tier.
* Tracking access to and lineage of objects through their life cycle.

Finally, when you know your vendor, you can look for solutions to automate the needed processes and phase-in.

See full article for more details.

Most SaaS providers will be relying on open source within two years, according to the recent Gartner research.

No wonder, open source significantly cuts costs for SaaS vendors, although not for the users. The cost cuts are likely to “be used to increase profitability or invested in research and development.”

Open source will be used in the operating system, application server of at a database level and will make up 30 per cent of an application, said Gartner.

Robert DeSisto, vice president at Gartner, said: “The more SaaS vendors use open source in the technology stack, the lower their software acquisition cost becomes.”

Another factor in favor for SaaS expansion is the recent economic downturn, which directs users to a lower risk and costs solutions (provided by the SaaS market).

Well, that only makes SaaS vendors, like Salesforce.com (uses an open source database), Apatar (open source data integration provider), that have already adopted open source to a certain extent way ahead of the rest of the software market.

Jeff Kaplan in his recent post examines what it really means to be SaaSy. He quite reasonably draws a distinct line between the market leaders and SaaS wannabes by signling out seven things that SaaS companies should really look into adopting if they want a chance to succeed :

Networked applications – One of the primary drivers of the SaaS movement is the need for increasingly mobile workers and geographically dispersed customers/partners to share information and collaborate with one another more effectively. Web-native applications which leverage wide-area networks (WAN) are better suited to fulfill this need than the highly centralized, on-premise applications of the past.

Enhanced user experience – Another key driver of SaaS is user frustration with the cumbersome, inflexible nature of legacy applications. These on-premise apps were generally designed to accommodate the technical demands of data center systems and corporate databases rather than appeal to the real-world workflows of businesses and intuitive senses of end-users.

Variable pricing – Corporate decision-makers are also fed up with the capital investments and significant risks associated with legacy apps. They no longer want to be locked into perpetual licenses and escalating maintenance agreements. Having the opportunity to try software solutions before they buy them, and then being able to use their operating budget to acquire the software functionality they need as they need it is especially appealing in today’s recessionary environment.

Real-time analytics – Given the economic climate and intensifying competitive landscape, companies of all sizes need to generate greater intelligence from their applications. It is for this reason that analytics is becoming an increasingly important feature in nearly every type of enterprise SaaS application, rather than just an assortment of standalone business intelligence SaaS solutions.

Continuous enhancements – We are also living in a time in which the rate of change is accelerating and customers expect their vendors to respond to their constantly changing needs. Therefore, leading SaaS solutions are those which rely on agile development techniques to incrementally improve their solutions on a continuous basis rather than depending on long development cycles to roll out disruptive ‘upgrades’ to their legacy applications.

Self-provisioned, dynamic toolkits – Corporate end-users are also becoming more tech savvy and more willing to take advantage of a rapidly expanding reservoir of gadgets, widgets and other mash-up devices to solve business problems or achieve their corporate objectives without the help of internal developers or outside consultants.

Aggregated data & benchmark studies – Smart SaaS companies are beginning to recognize that the SaaS model gives them unprecedented insight into their customers’ operations based on their SaaS usage patterns. These SaaS companies are accumulating activity data which can be converted into valuable benchmark statistics and best-practice studies. This puts the SaaS company in an advantageous position to provide a new level of value to their customers that gives them an opportunity to transform their user base into a powerful ‘club’ where users get insight in addition to software functionality.

I stumbled upon this article in NetworkWorld discussing the increasing adoption of Software as a Service practices all over the industry.

It states that the recent “Forrester survey of more than 1,000 IT decision-makers in North America and Europe found that 16% of enterprises had adopted SaaS as of 2007 – an increase from 12% the previous year but still a small minority.”

The article goes on saying that the “actual enterprise adoption of SaaS might be much higher, though, because business units often deploy hosted applications on their own, sometimes seeing it as a way to free themselves from relying on IT.”

The number of IT executives who have at least some interest in hosted software indicate to Herbert that IT involvement in SaaS projects is poised for a big increase.

The hosted software market is growing more mature, with extensive customization and integration into an enterprise’s internal systems. And whereas SaaS applications are typically for general business tasks like human resources, there are now hosted applications designed specifically to help IT staffers manage an enterprise’s technology.

The article is available over here.

“Widespread confusion was created during the 1950s and 1960s when each U.S. locality could start and end Daylight Saving Time as it desired. One year, 23 different pairs of DST start and end dates were used in Iowa alone. For exactly five weeks each year, Boston, New York, and Philadelphia were not on the same time as Washington D.C., Cleveland, or Baltimore–but Chicago was. And, on one Ohio to West Virginia bus route, passengers had to change their watches seven times in 35 miles! The situation led to millions of dollars in costs to several industries, especially those involving transportation and communications. Extra railroad timetables alone cost the today’s equivalent of over $12 million per year.” (From here.)

Yes, DST is a problem, and yes it’s gonna become only more so over the years. We live in a world totally different from the one our parents lived in. We live in an extraordinarily connected world, where the slightest time inconsistence may lead to irrecoverable errors and losses. That’s why speculations arise as to whether DST really is as important and ncessary of a thing, as is portrayed? Let’s see. With DST:

1. SaaS vendors have problems with updating time if they run applications on multiple servers. I.e., there’re problems with Google Calendar.

2. We face problems with synchronizing data and scheduling. The trouble lies in synchronizing and avoiding all the mismatches that might occur as a result of different countries switching to DST at different times and timezones changing “on the run”.

3. Time changes disrupt sleep patterns, cause harm to the health, and so on. According to health researches, DTS increase death rates, suicide commitments, heartaches, etc.

4. DST wastes more energy resources rather than saves any, according to various studies.

Clock shifts and DST rule changes have a direct economic cost, since they entail extra work to support remote meetings, computer applications and the like. For example, a 2007 North American rule change cost an estimated $500 million to $1 billion.

5. We miss meetings and appointments

6. Have problems interpreting and meeting deadlines
7. Struggle to tackle security-related issues and correlating log files

8. International business systems that function across multiple time zones face confusion

9. And so on and so forth.

Globalization made us as interdependent as ever and our world as web-connected as never (and you can only wonder how much closer it will get) and if the problems over DST might have been insignificant a decade or so back, they are far from being so today. Today DST makes businesses stumble, business intelligence fail and lead to the loss of our most precious resources - time and data… The question is why are things like that still allowed to happen?

Back to SaaS, more thoughts.

Software as a Service…a concept that seems so attractive and luring. Yet you can’t but ignore how some companies areconstantly criticizing it, telling the “horror stories” of how “friends of their friends” wasted time and resources depending on their SaaS providers, how it’s totally unreliable to let your customer data out and let some outsider be in control of it.

Rumours and fears like that don’t come out of nowhere, obviously. Companies, especially small and mid-sized businesses, get very touchy when it comes to their data and security for a reason. And the reason is…old-fashioned and conservative thinking.

In fact the ones that complain the most are usually the ones that realize the least just how vulnerable their data/software is inside their own company.  Com’n folks, look at the real picture.  With SaaS you’re not just letting out-of-house players be in control of your precious resources, but rather letting the pros protect, even fix it.

There’s nothing wrong in not knowing how EVERYTHING works and how to fix EVERYTHING. There are enough SaaS services to take a large chunk of your “everything” off your shoulders. =) Then you’ll be able to fcus on your internal assets and get double the work done with the same effort.

Let me list a few more benefits of having SaaS in your life:

• increased implementation speed;
• increased flexibility and usability;
• reduced dependence on IT services,
• access fom anywhere
• costs usually smaller than software license costs
• superior protection and security of your data

With that said…being conservative sure helps…sometimes… but as my coach used to say, “don’t be afraid of being progressive”.

Western Michigan University I.T. Forum to take place on March 28 forum at WMU’s Fetzer Center in Kalamazoo.

The forum will focus on the latest trends in Service-oriented architecture (SOA), Software as a Service, SaaS and the hosted systems is offers, and mashups, unifying internal and external data sources.

“Every business is using technology in some way,” Thomas Rienzo (who heads this year’s Western Michigan University I.T. Forum) said. “Every job is a tech job in some way. The question is, how do you do it? We’re hoping to provide some insight.”

David King, software architect for IBM, will propose how properly done service-oriented architecture can deliver more, deliver it faster and do it for less.

Ross Emerton, director of Fusion Solution Architecture of Oracle Consulting, will explain mashups.

Adam Caplan, president of Model Metrics, the largest Salesforce.com partner in metropolitan Chicago, will talk about the role of Software as a Service and its impact on business.

SaaS involves hosted systems - that is, the servers that power it live somewhere other than at the business for which they work. Having the hardware and the data offsite alleviates many of the maintenance headaches, but it also demands high trust, Rienzo noted.

You can register in advance at www.cis.hcob.wmich.edu/itforum, or by phone at 269-387-5410. Registration also will be taken at the door, beginning at 8 a.m.

Ever heard your sistem administrator (or for that matter any other person responsible for IT security in your company) complain that 24 hours in a day is just not enough to take care of everything? The server crashed, the software’s not working properly, network connections got screwed, laptops need to be configured, security alerts keep comming? No? Try running a vulnerability scan on your network and see the real picture. Your two or three IT people simply cannot do it all.

By turning to SaaS you make your data more secure, increase your working speed and productivity and let your IT people spend more time on thier direct responsibilities (and actually let them do their job more efficiently).

Think again, if you are still doubting to SaaS or not to SaaS =)

In this world of changing business requirements, flexibility is the key to providing a positive customer experience and, in the long run, succeeding. Flexibility, however, is a complicated deal. Not all companies have the power, time and resources to constantly readapt to the new OC’s, new security measures, new software, new systems, updated and improved work strategies… if you spend all your time on these processes (and they do have the potential to take ALL of your time), who’s gonna do business for you?

This is precisely the reason why the SaaS market has exploded in the recent years and why companies increasingly put their trust along with their confidential data into the hands of outside service providers, rather than in those of their in-house staff.

Google’s recent survey on “message security and compliance”, involving 575 IT professionals, showed that the majority of respondents (53%) believe that “IT holds ultimate responsibility for their organization’s communications security and compliance. They also realize that organizations need to have policies and mechanisms in place to help achieve this.”

The survey confirmed the growing need for software-as-a-service (SaaS), “which is taking the place of in-house solutions that tend to require significant internal resources to maintain. The results suggest that one reason SaaS is gaining momentum is that the problems it solves are top-of-mind for IT departments, such as spending too much time or money on troubleshooting and maintenance.”

“By using SaaS service providers, organizations can offload capacity challenges, get real-time updates, and benefit from the economies of scale of a large network.”