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SaaS gets hit by SaaS-querade

It is only natural that a when a new buzz word gets created it attracts the attention of marketers. SaaS and Cloud computing are amongst the most popular buzz words when it comes to IT industry.

If you are new to these buzz words you can read about SaaS and Cloud computing here and here and here, these are all excellent blogs and will give you great insights.

In this post I will explore some of the confusion that is going around in the market and what companies need to do to separate the truth from marketing jargons.

SaaS = Software as a Service. So any company which is giving software to you as a service should be called a SaaS company. Maybe there is some merit in keeping the definition so simple.

Let’s now focus on the second S of SaaS - the Service aspect – different people will have different connotations to Service. I take a simple example of owning a car vs renting a taxi cab. With a taxi cab you don’t have to pay the for total cost of the car but only for the kms you travel – albeit on a much higher rate. So SaaS is like your software cab service with a significant difference that it is supposed to be always there when you need it (since it is on the web).

So how do you know that the vendor you are talking to is a genuine SaaS vendor without peeking inside the hood. I would recommend three simple tests
- You should be able to use a trial (preferably through self service sign on) almost instantaneously. If a vendor is asking you to register and then informs that they will setup a custom demo or if they insist that they will take your data and do a demo for you be very careful. Some applications are not easy to configure so you might need help and vendors do not offer these services free so you might have to invest time and effort to configure and test but nevertheless the demo should be available.
- There should be minimal entry and exit barriers. The cost of activating a new account or user for a SaaS vendor is not prohibitive and these cost savings compared to traditional software should be passed to you as a customer. You should be able to export your data whenever you want for a small fee if not free
- Check their upgrade frequency – single application and common database allows the SaaS vendors to roll out much more rapid upgrades and these are also bundled in the subscription price. So you as the customer will benefit from the application being always current.

I would love to hear your views and experiences. We at EazeWork genuinely believe that SaaS is changing the way companies are using software applications and would like to invite you to participate in this revolution. Please visit us at http://www.eazework.com to know more about our offerings.

SaaS and Cloud Computing is it for SMEs

Over the last 25-30 years we have seen significant maturing of various aspects of IT, at the same time IT has been guilty of over-promising and under delivering, this gap is crucial in current context where IT has become the corner stone of most successful businesses. But in the last decade developments in the way business is conducted and Information Technology have come together to give rise to a new Software delivery model which has shown exceptional growth and has become the latest buzzword - SaaS and Cloud Computing. 

There is a difference between SaaS and Cloud Computing. SaaS is more about applications and services for the end customer which can be business or a consumer and Cloud Computing is a way to provision computing infrastructure on which SaaS applications would sit.

SaaS has significant advantages and there are many a blogs covering them. Simply put with adoption of SaaS, companies need not pay exorbitant prices for hardware, software and customization and need to only pay for the IT services they are using.

Is SaaS and Cloud Computing for SMEs 

While large and mature mid-sized corporate have been able to gain efficiencies and also strategic advantages due to successful implementations of IT solution the same cannot be said for small and medium sized enterprises. The complexity of software applications, prohibitive costs, risk of obsolescence, inability to retain IT manpower and lack of expertise are some of the factors which have made usage of IT difficult for SMEs. On the other hand opening up of world economy due to globalization has presented with an opportunity to SMEs to grow, this growth is possible only when the businesses are able to innovate and build speed, efficiencies and scalability in their operations.

On the technology front three different factors have come together to make SaaS a reality

1.       Growth in telecom and internet infrastructure as evident by increased mobile, broadband and wireless connectivity

2.       Computer operating systems, hardware and storage systems have matured to such an extent that companies need not buy the hardware. Instead they can lease computing time, storage space and bandwidth as per their requirements from a Data Centre

3.       Secure software applications which are capable of mirroring business processes can be developed in a relatively short time. These applications can also be changed as the business requirements change making them easier to use

Increasing popularity of SaaS and Cloud Computing

SaaS and Cloud computing have become extremely popular over the last 2-3 years and have reached an inflection point in 2009. Various factors like maturing of storage, web access and computing technologies, global recession forcing companies to postpone capital expenditure and use of Services Oriented Architecture based business applications have led to this industry exceeding all growth expectations.

SaaS for Developing World

While most of the growth and maturity of SaaS and Cloud computing has been witnessed in the Developed Economies there are unique challenges and advantages for the Developing Economies also. Some of these factors which need to be considered when leveraging SaaS and Cloud computing in Developing countries are

• Pricing at which the global SaaS providers are operating are not tenable in Developing countries. Monthly rentals are ranging from USD 15-60 per user per module and in some cases are as high as 150 USD.
• Most of the Cloud computing infrastructure is physically present in US, Europe and other parts of Developed world. Since cyber laws are not uniform across the globe, Governments will have to ensure that usage of Cloud infrastructure which is located outside their country is governed through a well developed cyber laws.
• Internet connectivity is still a problem especially in remote locations and companies  need to keep this important consideration in design.
• Usage of IT applications is low in general so the challenge would be to ensure adoption and consistent usage. These would need a well developed training and operational support program.
• All users including Business owners are paranoid about security of their confidential information; these issues need to be addressed unequivocally.
• Not everyone has an access to computers, application have to be simple enough to enable use though a mobile phone using SMS based interaction.

For information on SaaS applications for SMEs you can visit our website http://www.eazework.com.

eGovernance and SaaS

There have been various initiatives around the world on e-Governance over the last 15 odd years. Some extremely successful and some not so successful. It would be interesting to analyze the reasons of lack of success of of e-Governance projects. Before we attempt to do that lets understand what a successful e-Governance project would be..

The challenges for the Central and State Government to implement a e-Governance project are multiple. Some of the these are -

1. Processes are not uniform across the districts and hence no one application can fit the bill: this argument has been given since the beginning of computerization.. the truth is that processes will never be uniform unless there is a backbone holding them together.

2. Its prohibitively expensive to build, deploy, maintain and service an eGovernance application more so because the basic infrastructure is also not there.

3. States have a fairly high level of autonomy and also widely varying levels of maturity.

At the same time there is a very clear trend towards increased use of online processes for G2C (Government to Citizen) services. While the traditional solutions of building applications and deploying them through Data Centers or through a desk top based application are being tried out there are some advantages which are offered by Web applications.

Cost to Deploy : When we compare the cost of building, deploying and maintaining applications through an on-premise setup with the cost of doing the same with an intelligence mix of Web and Desktop based application there are significant differences. I am careful to not advocate a Web only scenario because the reliability of internet connectivity is still not very high in a country like India (more so for remote locations).

Public Private Partnership - Any agency which works with the Government to provide e-Governance services should work on a PPP model. The investment made by the Government and the agency should be equitable and the rewards also in line.Web based SaaS type of e-Governance solution are designed to be multi-tenant and scalable. This allows for the partner agency to control their costs and provide scalability to the application as the usage grows.

Managing Upgrades - No e-Governance process will work if it is not flexible. There are many reasons why processes change and only the applications which are able to manage these changes without disturbing the regular flow would be successful. Since SaaS applications have a centralized database and application instance the process of implementing changes and providing rapid releases is managed in a much more smoother manner.