A Blog About Software As A Service
This blog is all about software as a service (SaaS) for business. If it is in the cloud, you will find it here.
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Weathering the IT Budget Storm of 2009
Posted on June 1st, 2009 1 commentI believe this may be the understatement of the century, but hey, I’ll go for it anyway: IT Budgets are not increasing this year. Yup, I know. Really stepped out on a limb there and took a chance, now didn’t I? With budgets in nearly every business unit being cut, it is no surprise that companies are trying to cut back on any new spending - even when it comes to mission-critical IT expenditures. And with mid-market IT managers expected to perfiorm miracles daily in order to keep everything running smoothly, how are they expected to maintain the same level of awesomeness with a smaller budget? Well, here are a few ways for IT pros to maximize their current environment.
First, let me take a few steps away from conjecture. Rather than just taking my word for it, let’s look at some real numbers on IT Budgets. Just today, IDC put out a report that IT spending will decline by 1.8% in 2009. That’s the bad news. The good news is that:
Declining information technology (IT) spending by clients will bottom out in 2009 and will experience marginal growth in 2010, market research and advisory firm IDC has said. Global IT spending is expected to grow 2.9% in 2010 before nearly doubling to 5.7% in 2012.
Okay, so if IDC is right, 2009 will be a year of doing the most with what you’ve got, while 2002-2012 should be a lot better froim an IT Budgeting perspective. So what can you do to maximize your current environment? Well, I’m glad I pretended you asked.
1. Save Money On Network Storage- All right, that’s an easy one, right? No? In theory, it should be fairly simple to figure out how to save some valuable dough on network storage. Some ideas:
- Find Old Files- Find out which old files can be archived, moved or deleted and get them off your network
- Find Files That Shouldn’t Be There- You’ve probably got files on your network that shouldn’t be there in the first place. We’re talking about MP3s, Movies, Family Photos and more. Your users shouldn’t be using your expensive network storage as their own personal entertainment center/ photo album.
- Find Out What Users/Groups are taking up the most space- Understanding the owners of data can help you with chargebacks or at least it can help you find the right size for their needs.
2. Find Out What Others Are Doing- How does your IT spending compare with others in your industry? What’s your storage and management cost per GB, and how does it compare with companies of similar size with similar retention and archiving policies?
3. Take a Look At SaaS/Cloud Offerings- Sure, I’m a little bit biased here, but you owe it to yourself to see if there are SaaS-based solutions that can both save you money and alleviate some of the burden of your IT staff.
Well, that’s just a start. I’d love to hear you other suggestions on ways to keep costs low to keep within a declining budget.
Nathan Burke is the marketing manager at Aprigo, a Waltham, MA-based startup developing online data management tools for IT Managers. To learn more about the company, go to the Aprigo site, or to sign up to be notified when Aprigo launches, click here.
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This Weekend In SaaS- A Roundup of SaaS stories
Posted on May 18th, 2009 2 commentsYou know, I knew that SaaS as a topic of blog posts was really starting to heat up, but wow. I’m gone for two days and my RSS reader and inbox are jammed with new articles. So I thought I’d do a quick roundup of the posts that were most relevant. Here goes.
The Widening Gap Between SaaS Demand And Supply- At Avigdor Luttinger’s Blog, the post talks about the growing demand for SaaS-based software and the slow growth in supply. From the post:
So at present we have a growing demand for SaaS, and a stagnant supply of some 40 successful SaaS solutions that has little chance to grow and match the demand for more variety, due to the technical and financial barriers mentioned above. Consequently, we could expect some M&A activity as successful SaaS vendors would acquire failing traditional vendors with good IP, and then start porting that IP to their platforms. But that would take a few years – until new solutions become available in quantity.
Which means that we have a growing vacuum – on one hand stagnant supply, and on the other growing demand.
Over on Technocratica, Dr. Jim Butler has a great SaaS design checklist. His post describes the security, SLA, Subscription Servicing, External Services, Resource Sharing, and Flexibility/Extensibility. I had the pleasure of working with the good doctor at a previous company and can say with 100% confidence that the guy knows his stuff. Awesome post.
At edd blog online, Jeffery Fehrman has a post entitled Cloud Computing - Who’s Watching Your Back? Mr. Fehrman seems to really dislike the idea of having data hosted by a third party, and at the end of the post, he invokes the "police can search your data without a warrant" argument. From the post:
Oh yeah, and the courts have ruled that the police can search your data without a warrant, as long as others hold that data. If the police want to read the e-mail on your computer, they need a warrant; but they don’t need one to read it from the backup tapes at your cloud provider.
Another emerging trend this weekend was the "Google went down for a couple of hours, so that’s proof that SaaS and cloud computing cannot be trusted" theme.
Google Outages Raise Questions About Cloud Future- this article, by Nicholas Kolakowski asks whether cloud-based services are really ready for the enterprise. From the article:
The downtime experienced by Google on 14 May, the latest in a series of temporary shutdowns experienced by cloud-based service companies throughout 2009, evokes one of those questions of burning importance to the enterprise: Are cloud-based services truly ready to meet business needs that require virtually continuous uptime?
Google’s occasional shutdowns reliably bring a great deal of media attention, as with the February incident that took down Gmail in the United States and the United Kingdom for about 2.5 hours. A few months before that, in August 2008, Google Gmail and Google Apps underwent 15 hours of downtime.
and
"If your revenue is based on being able to stay in contact with people, and you have an outage, it can build to significant levels of damage quickly, so your tolerances are tight," Rob Enderle, an analyst with the Enderle Group, said in an interview.
"The outages that Google experiences [don't] happen in a well-run enterprise," Enderle added. "I’m not sure Google gets the enterprise; even with Microsoft, it took them bringing in employees from places like IBM before they understood it. Google has not yet gone through that process, even with a CEO coming out of Sun—it requires a fairly large infusion of people who get the enterprise."
The Industry Standard has two posts, Cloud computing: Pros and cons and 10 cloud computing companies to watch.
VM times has an article on IT Management In The Clouds With SaaS, which talks about the evolution of IT Service Management from local storage to the cloud. From that post:
This IT Management evolution was all made possible due the maturity of SAAS, (Software as a Service), going main stream. Over the last years we have experienced an escalation of applications migrating from the desktop to the Internet. Apparently, the physical conditions of both the Internet and network infrastructure have matured enough and made the economic option of SAAS the obvious solution.
First of all, it’s always about the numbers. Now, organizations can question whether it is sensible to purchase, configure, host, maintain, air condition, and backup. Suddenly, worrying about application software and hardware is optional. Alternatively, for a fraction of the cost, a company can “rent” applications remotely using a PC browser or a cellular browser and they can do this anywhere and any time, 24×7.
All right, that’s all for today.
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Article: SaaS gaining mindshare over license model
Posted on May 5th, 2009 No commentsJust saw this on ZDNet Asia by Victoria Ho. The article is entitled "SaaS gaining mindshare over license model", and it goes on to show that the adoption rate of SaaS is starting to heat up in the Asian-Pacific region. From the article:
"[Online distribution] has been growing well and reflects strong customer preference…it is widely accepted and considered an effective mode of interaction," he said.
Dickens added, however, that a different online distribution model, SaaS, is picking up in adoption rate due to its touted benefits such as lower total cost of ownership, quick deployment and lowered risk of implementation.
Different from software sold online, which is, downloaded or activated online but still installed on-premise, SaaS provides software accessible as a service over the Internet, with no installation of it on customers’ hardware.
Stable broadband connectivity in the region is also helping boost interest in SaaS for HP, he said.
And SaaS lifts the burden of managing customer licenses and delivering software maintenance from vendors’ shoulders too, said Dickens.
The article goes on to say that it is the "customer interest in SaaS’ "greater value proposition" that is pulling vendors to answering this demand." Additionally, widespread piracy of download-and-install software is making vendors make the move to the SaaS model.
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SaaS and IT Management with Divakar Jandhyala of eVapt
Posted on April 28th, 2009 No commentsJust found this video of Divakar Jandhyala of eVapt, on PodTech, in which Jandhyala talks about the other side of SaaS for IT Management: IT Management of SaaS. He talks about how IT departments are dealing with the adoption of SaaS solutions and what the IT department of the future will look like. Interesting stuff.
