SaaS For IT Management
This blog is all about using Software as a Service (SaaS) for IT Management.
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SaaS, IT Management, and Storage News Roundup
Posted on December 2nd, 2009 2 commentsGoodbye November, hello December.
It’s about time to have a look around the SaaS/IT Management blogosphere to highlight what’s going on.
Shameless Self Promotion
Wasn’t sure whether to do this first or last, but I might as well get it out of the way. Here’s a quick roundup of Aprigo news since the last roundup:
- Seven Tips to Help Manage Data Storage Growth – Computer Technology Review- An article we wrote for the Computer Technology Review
- Do storage managers have a “pack rat” mentality?- A blog post on the Aprigo blog defending storage managers from Symantec’s assertion that they are pack rats
- Aprigo On KillerStartups.com - Aprigo was featured on KillerStartups.com, a site that lets readers vote whether the startup will “be a killer.”
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Aprigo NINJA in PCMag.com’s @Work Blog- Aprigo NINJA was featured in PCMag.com’s @Work blog by Errol Pierre-Louis.
We’ve got more news coming, but I don’t want to bore you with that. Moving right along……
Storage News
- Scott Lowe has resurrected his Storage Short Take series, and it’s well worth the wait. In this, #5 in the series, Scott gives the Reader’s Digest version of what’s going on in the storage world.
- On the StorageBod blog,
- W. Curtis Preston has a wrapup of data protection and data backup trends in 2009
IT Management News
- Chris Evans at GestaltIT gives a wrapup of the first annual GestaltIT Tech Field Day, where both vendors and journalists converged for discussions and evaluations of the hottest tech products. Judging from the coverage, it was an excellent event, and they’re already planning the second annual event.
- Looks like IT spending is up according to Bob Evans, as he reports “Accenture Stock Target Soars As CEO Sees IT Recovery“. From the post: “A Credit Suisse analyst has boosted his target price for Accenture shares from $42 to $55 on the expectation that enterprise IT spending is beginning to loosen up and that Accenture will be a prime beneficiary of CIOs’ more-expansive spending habits and their increasing acceptance of outsourcing.”
- Mozy has a great video highlighting the importance of data backup by asking people on the street how much they’d sell their laptop for right this minute.
SaaS News
- The Security Risks with Sharing Documents and How to Prevent Them- Adi Ruppin has an article in IT Business Edge talking about the new access control opportunities and threats brought about by introducing SaaS in IT Management.
- Enterprise SaaS Working Group: Identity Management in the Cloud- Ryan Nichols has a post summarizing the Enterprise SaaS Working Groups activity around identity management in the cloud.
All right, that’s it for now. I’ll keep trying to do this weekly.
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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.
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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.
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