SaaS For IT Management
This blog is all about using Software as a Service (SaaS) for IT Management.
-
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.
-
Clip: SaaS’s Spring Fling: Venture Community Bets Heavily on SaaS
Posted on May 14th, 2009 No commentsChristopher W. Cabrera, founder of Xactly has a post entitled "SaaS’s Spring Fling: Venture Community Bets Heavily on SaaS" which talks about the huge VC interest in SaaS vendors recently. From the post:
The latest cases in point are SaaS vendors Workday, which closed a $75 million venture round, and ExactTarget, which just last week attracted $70 million in venture funding. ExactTarget had to forgo an IPO late last year because of the economic downturn, but that hasn’t kept the VC community from regarding the company as a prime investment opportunity. Meanwhile, Workday has now raised a total of more than $150 million from investors who clearly believe in CEO (and PeopleSoft founder) David Duffield’s vision for SaaS.
My favorite part of the post, however, is in the beginning:
The SaaS battle continues to rage in some quarters, with traditional on-premise software vendors still fighting a vociferous rearguard action, even as some are slowly moving to test the SaaS waters for themselves.
Vociferous rearguard action? I love it. Tags: SaaS
-
Making a Case for SaaS: A Look At Costs
Posted on May 12th, 2009 1 commentJeff Hassemer, vice president, product management, of software provider Entiera has a post up on multichannelmerchant.com entitled "Making a Case for SaaS". The article details the ROI implications of Software as a Service:
SaaS applications have been in the market for quite a while now. Most online marketing software companies—those that provide functions such as e-mail, Web analytics, ad serving or behavioral targeting—operate in this model.
What this means is the vendor who developed the software also supplies the infrastructure to manage the software. The customer then pays a fee for its particular usage of the software. This is done either as a monthly commitment or possibly a variable cost based on volume.
Contrast that with a standard software license purchase. After an initial upfront fee and implementation fee, the customer also needs to:
- Purchase and set up a server to install the software (sometimes several)
- Buy any necessary ancillary software licenses (database system, operating system, middle ware, etc.)
- Pay ongoing support costs for the hardware (electricity, security systems, IT staff), plus an annual license and maintenance fee (a percentage of the list price of the software)
- Handle all system upgrades and ongoing maintenance
- In many cases, pay upgrade fees for new versions of the softwareAll of these costs can add up over time. One thing often overlooked in a traditional software purchase is the ongoing expense of upgrading the systems to support the core application itself.
Have a look at the article.
-
Bloggista: 10 Reasons To Consider Using SaaS
Posted on May 12th, 2009 No commentsJust saw this excellent post at Bloggista, entitled 10 Reasons Why Companies Should Seriously Consider SaaS Software Now. The article goes through all the benefits of software as a service. Rather than ripping off the article, I encourage you to go check it out. A little preview:
Software as a Service, or SaaS is a model where software is rented instead of buying it. Applications are delivered via the internet, accessed using a pc with internet connection and a browser.
The model has been implemented for quite some time now, but its popularity was exponential lately when businesses started to look for better yet cheaper alternatives to traditional, often costly and hard to implement business softwares.
However, in my almost 3 years of actively advocating for SaaS and Open Source technologies, I found that many business owners are still not aware of this model.
The article then goes on to detail the 10 reasons why companies should take a look at SaaS. Tags: SaaS
-
Gartner Revises SaaS Forecast
Posted on May 8th, 2009 No commentsOver at Daily IT News (a blog that really does a good job at covering SaaS and IT), there’s a post stating that Gartner has revised its 2009 forecast for global SaaS revenues. From the article:
Global revenues from software-as-a-service (SaaS) products will increase by 22 per cent this year, according to a leading technology analyst.
Revising its forecasts for the year, Gartner Research has predicted that applications delivered via a hosted server will generate sales worth $9.6 billion in 2009, compared to $6.6 billion last year.
Specifically, the market intelligence firm claimed that customer relationship management programs will account for $2.1 billion of this sum, while enterprise resource planning software will experience revenues of $1.3 billion.
-
Article: Cloud software matures as economy boosts allure
Posted on May 6th, 2009 1 commentJim Finkle has an article in Reuters today entitled "Cloud software matures as economy boosts allure". The article gives more evidence toward the widespread adoption of SaaS in a down economy.
BOSTON (Reuters) - Web-based business software sales are growing briskly, even as most of the industry stalls, as the segment pioneered by Salesforce.com Inc (CRM.N) benefits from the weak economy and fading concerns about security.
Gartner Research now expects 2009 sales of so-called cloud-based software to grow 22 percent to a record $8 billion, a touch higher than before, the firm said on Tuesday.
"We are still going strong," said Gartner analyst Sharon Mertz, who advises IT managers on software purchases. "The model is pretty solid, even in these tight economic times."
This puts pressure on established software companies such as Microsoft Corp (MSFT.O), International Business Machines Corp (IBM.N), Oracle Corp (ORCL.O) and SAP AG (SAPG.DE) to play catch-up, after standing on the sidelines for most of the past decade as Salesforce and others gained credibility with corporate clients.
Providers of cloud-based software, also known as Software as a Service or SaaS, host the technology in their own data centers, allowing customers to access it via ordinary Web browsers. That saves clients the cost of buying licenses in advance and running programs on their own computers.
Thus, SaaS sales have outperformed traditional software as the economy worsened. "It has low cost and low risk," said Rebecca Wettemann, an analyst with Nucleus Research, which helps IT managers evaluate software programs.
and….
Gartner expects the SaaS market to grow at average annual rates of 19.4 percent through 2013, far above the 5.2 percent growth for the overall business management software market.
Investors have noticed and shares of major SaaS providers currently trade at a premium. Salesforce, whose stock has gained 40 percent this year, is trading at about 56 times forward earnings according to Reuters Estimates. NetSuite, which is up 48 percent this year, trades at a multiple of 93.
I think we’ll see more and more articles just like this one in the coming weeks and months.
-
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.
-
System Management Going SaaS?
Posted on May 5th, 2009 No commentsJust saw this article on CloudEnterprise.info entitled “IDC: System Management going SaaS“. In the article, Dmitry Sotnikov looks at the move toward SaaS in a historical context and wonders whether IT managers will be able to move toward using cloud services to manage their in-house assets. From the article:
Software as a Service started in consumer web, and then expanded into end-user-oriented business and collaboration sites (Salesforce.com, Google Apps). The question is whether the model can go from this to administrative tools so IT people can start using cloud services to manage their local on-premise systems they have.
As paradoxical as it sounds this actually makes a lot of sense because a lot of small-/medium-sized just cannot afford maintaining all the infrastructure required to run these system management solutions (servers, backups, redundancy, databases, reporting engines, patching all of that, and so on.) SaaS delivery model offers a more cost effective model and the ability to resell the product as service via service providers.
I think Dmitry makes some great points in this article. Since most mid-sized and smaller IT departments are so focused on putting out fires and making sure things are running smoothly today, it’s almost impossible to focus on backups, data deduplication, network storage planning and so on. There just aren’t enough people or hours in the day, and adding more infrastructure to help monitor infrastructure just adds to the problem. But using a SaaS, hosted suite of tools to take back control of IT management? Now that sounds pretty sweet. And yes, I am super biased here.
-
SaaS For IT Management
Posted on May 5th, 2009 4 commentsI posted this on my other blog, but since it’s more relevant here, I’ll just post it again.
The idea that SaaS tools focused on IT Management are all the rage. Now, don’t just take my word for it, let’s look at what the experts are saying:
In this article, Andrew Conry-Murray talks about the move toward SaaS-ifying (just made that sucker up) IT managment. From the piece:A subset of IT management startups are taking the SaaS or hybrid-SaaS route, which promises simpler deployment than traditional premises software. Companies such as Paglo, which is aimed at small businesses, and Service-now.com, which targets Global 2000 customers, use the SaaS model to provide a variety of IT management services.
A new report from Forrester forecasts the future of this market. (You can read a summary here.) At present, it says SaaS-based IT management accounts for a measly 1% of IT management software. But by 2013, the report anticipates SaaS vendors will have a modest 10% of the market.
While those numbers probably don’t have the Big Four (BMC (NYSE: BMC), IBM (NYSE: IBM) Tivoli,HP (NYSE: HPQ), and CA (NSDQ: CA)) trembling, another figure might: Forrester predicts that enterprises with 1,000 or more employees will account for 50% of SaaS installations in 2009.
These are really interesting figures to me, as the SaaS model makes a lot of sense for the mid-market to small(er) size IT departments…as much as the Global 2000 companies.Here’s an excerpt from the Forrester article cited in the InformationWeek story:How Big Is SaaS In IT Management Software?
by Peter O’Neill
with Stefan Ried, Ph.D., Reedwan IqbalSoftware-as-a-service (SaaS) is disrupting the IT management software market. Incumbent software vendors are setting up new business units and adding SaaS offerings to existing portfolios; managed service providers are repositioning their offerings to leverage the trend; and new pure-play SaaS operators are extending their success by taking advantage of product churn in various established vendors’ service and asset management customer bases. Forrester has developed a market forecast model for IT management SaaS that shows that SaaS will grow from making up just over 1% of the $18 billion IT management software market in 2008 to 10% by 2013, by which time many of the brand SaaS providers could be well established.Like I said, it’s just an excerpt. If you want to read the whole article, it’ll cost you $749.I may be biased, but the SaaS model just makes sense. If you’re at a gigantic company with the resources (both in personnel and finance) to constantly install, monitor and patch hardware and software that is supposed to manage your data (think about that for a second), then a SaaS solution might not make much sense to you. But if you’re at a company that is constantly putting out fires, has a small IT group managing a LOT of data, and don’t have the time or money to support new IT Management software, then I’d imagine the subscription-based SaaS model sounds pretty attractive.But again, I’m biased. -
SaaS For IT Management
Posted on May 5th, 2009 No commentsWell, I just picked up this domain today, and hopefully I’ll use this site rather than letting it collect dust. I’m Nathan Burke, marketing manager for a startup company called Aprigo. We’re developing a suite of software as a service tools for IT managers. That’s pretty much all I can tell you for now since we’re still in shhhhhh stealth mode. But I’m planning on using this blog to keep track of what’s going on news-wise when it comes to SaaS tools for IT management.
Sponsored By Aprigo
