SaaS For IT Management
This blog is all about using Software as a Service (SaaS) for IT Management.
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This Week In SaaS For IT
Posted on November 6th, 2009 1 commentAll right, I have to admit it….when it comes to updating this blog, I’ve been a bum. But I’m trying to get back into the habit of posting at least a few times per week, and in that spirit, here’ this week’s rundown of stories about SaaS for IT.
10 ways to evaluate your IT management software- Saar Bitner from SysAid Technologies has a great list to help evaluate your IT Management Software.
The True Cost of On-Premise ITAM tools- The guys at SAManage outline the real costs associated with on-premise tools.
Remote Data Backup Pitfalls and Solutions- A good look at remote data backup issues on the Data Recovery Blog.
Overheard: Cloud Computing - Learn It Or Lose- On the IT Management and Cloud Blog, John Willis is interviewed by Jim Ericson.
SaaS Silos Create New IT Management Challenges- Phil Wainewright has an interview with th Scott Bils of Conformity on the management challenges organizations are facing as they increase the number of SaaS applications they take on, and learn why SaaS and cloud require a new approach to identity and systems management.
Business case for SaaS- Dennis Howlett gives his take on the business case for SaaS, by David Terrar.
…and a couple of shameless plugs from the Aprigo blog:
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The Aprigo Scan and Tell Contest- Try Aprigo NINJA, Tell Us About It, Get a $10 Amazon Credit
Posted on October 2nd, 2009 4 commentsLast month, we launched the private beta of Aprigo NINJA, and we’d like to hear what IT pros think of it. We’re giving the first 50 qualified participants a free $10 Amazon Gift Certificate for sharing their thoughts on Aprigo NINJA. Here’s how to get your $10 Amazon credit:
- Sign up for a free Aprigo NINJA Account on the right of this page.
- When your account is activated, download NINJA and run a scan of 100 GB or more
- Tell us about your experience with Aprigo NINJA
Let us know how you’d use Aprigo NINJA in your environment or your suggestions or ideas for feature enhancements. You can let us know on twitter, the feedback button in Aprigo NINJA, on GetSatisfaction, or by leaving a comment on our blog.
If you decide you’d like to tell-a-friend after you’ve run a scan, we’ll give you an additional $5 credit for each friend that signs up, runs a scan, and tells us about it.
The Aprigo Scan and Tell Giveaway from aprigo on Vimeo.
To get started, sign up for your free account here.
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Another SaaS IT Benefit: Automatic Updates
Posted on September 1st, 2009 3 commentsThe following post is cross-posted from the Aprigo Blog:
Last Thursday we announced the release of Aprigo NINJA . One of the cool built-in features is automatic updates.
When we thought about rolling out automatic updates, our motivation was streamlining user experience: We’re delivering a SaaS IT management product which needs to have a small presence in the customer’s environment. Now, when you develop a pure SaaS offering, with zero on-premise presence, all you have to do is update the back-end and the customer immediately enjoys the benefits of the new version (at least, the next time they log-in).
When developing a SaaS IT Management solution, we wanted to provide a similar experience even though our customers have a small (SaaS) client on-site (needed because after all you want to manage YOUR environment).
It’s a dilemma, but we’ve figured out a solution. So here’s what we’ve done:
- Back-end updates are transparent to customers (we’re running on AWS and there’s a lot of stuff that’s happening there: Servers, App servers, DBs, clustering, replication, snapshots etc.) This is one of the benefits of a SaaS IT Management offering - we remove the complexity out of the customer’s environment and updates happen without interference.
- We have an ‘update-aware’ SaaS client - when an update is available, the next time a customer logs-in to our AIR client (why we chose AIR is probably worthwhile a post on its own), they will see a message saying “a new version is available”. They then simply click a button to upgrade and that’s it.
The automatic upgrade.Again, we were thinking about streamlining the customer’s experience, but after reading a post on Everything Sysadmin that talked about automatic updates, I started to understand that automatic updates are also a key security issue (see the following ACM article by the Google Chrome authors on the security issues around automatic updates).
Wow. That struck my curiosity, so I started googling around, and landed on google’s blog post describing their automatic updater with lots of statistics that show the benefits of having an automatic update capability. Some examples:
- Increased security thanks to timely deployment of security vulnerability fixes
- Better software stability thanks to timely bug fixes
- New features that make software more powerful
At the same time, getting all users to work with the latest software release is advantageous for the vendor:
- Happier users due to more stable, more secure applications with additional features
- Less support required: only unfixed bugs in the latest version get reported by users
- Less testing: engineers don’t have to keep testing older versions on newer platforms and with new third party software or drivers
Even though the research is from the perspective of a web browser I feel it’s equally applicable on a wider scale; even when it comes to on-premise components.
So armed with this knowledge of the additional benefits, we’ll continue working on our next release and will work hard on delivering the next wave of SaaS IT Management solutions. In the meantime, if you want to work with us as a design partner, let us know. We’re always looking to work with people that are smarter than us!
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Aprigo NINJA Now Available
Posted on August 31st, 2009 2 commentsI can finally say the 5 words I’ve been wanting to say for months now: Aprigo NINJA is now available.
But before I go celebrating and trying to get the world to try it out, I do have to mention one important caveat: this is a private beta. This is most definitely a “soft launch”, as we’re only approving a handful of accounts at a time. We want to make sure that the people using it have the best possible experience, and want to get as much early feedback as possible.
How we’re accepting users:
There’s a registration form on nearly every page at www.aprigo.com, and when a user signs up there, we get notified that they’ve applied for an account. However, after filling out the first form, they’re redirected to a second form, asking them some more questions. The more information they give us, the better the chance we’ll approve them. It’s basically a way to jump to the head of the line.
Why do we want more information on our users? Now that’s a good question, and I promise: there’s nothing insidious about what we’re doing. We mainly want to know how the product will be used, in what kind of environment, etc. We will never share personal information with any outside party.
So, if you want to get in on the private beta for Aprigo NINJA, head on over to this page and sign up.
For a 60-second look at Aprigo NINJA, check out this video:
Sponsored By Aprigo
