Archive for the ‘SaaS’ Category
Retail Rumblings
Comment on; Is there a Future for a Commerce Cloud? from Retail Rumblings
I think that “the cloud” is here, and will stay … or has been here for a while, just think about all the mainframe applications that is hosted and run in a distant location somewhere … isn’t that the cloud? What have happened lateley (the last years) is that a standard of accessing and govern services run from a distance, and by other organisations is eveolving.
We can call this cloud computing, we can call this service oriented architecture or we can call it enhanced mainframe computing :-) but to be really honest it is all about experience, and ability to use standards to lower the risk, and deliver business driven applications.
I think that the days when IT departements was in charge of the enterprise solutions is coming to an end. We are now in the days when, finally, the business will drive the functionality. As an example look at the 2009 version of Microsoft Dynamics AX, where there is an easy to use workflow engine (based on standard) it is integrated with the SharePoint software so that it is easy to publish and handle the information from remote sites.
The challange to come is the quality of the services, and how to govern this; SOA Governance if we dont have a good way of handling the quality and the responsibilities, and everything around that the cloud computing will not be as successful as it could be. It is in a way two different kind of transactions that needs to be taken into consideration; business critical, and non business critical.
But back to the fact that business and IT need to collaborate; I think that an obvious example of this can also be seen inside Microsoft Dynamics AX 2009 where alerts, and different levels can be altered by non IT people. This might be true for SAP, Oracle, and many other business applications, and if you have good examples, please tell me.
so in summary; Yes there is a Future for a Commerce Cloud. The correct business transactions and IT infrastructure will be moved into the cloud first, but when the cloud computing reaches higher maturity we will se more and more business critical solutions moving in there also.
SaaS and the need for scalability
What requirement does the SaaS (Software + Service) put on your systems scalability? In theory it will require you to have IT systems that can scale more or less unlimited. This is if the context is that you are providing a SaaS system for others to use. If you are a provider of services to use or you are a company that are using services from someone else, you are still depending on the fact that it can scale. You could argue that when you are consuming the service (using) you can solve the issue by having a service level agreement (SLA), and yes some kind of contract is always needed when two parties are providing services to each other. But a SLA will not be very useful when your company shall merge with the newly bought company and you suddenly need twice the number of users that run the SaaS application, and the service provider just can not scale. It might be a question of time, the service provider needs to buy more hardware, and is "just" waiting to get it delivered, but depending on the service plattform in the back it might be that it just is not possible to scale. SaaS is about using a service from some source, and the source can be modern and it can be of more or less legacy type. When it is a modern type of back end systems, and
content sources there is a good chance of it being scalable, but what about when the backend system is old, and maybe not that scalable? will the Service provider have the possibility to scale as you as consumer want? It can also be the case that your SaaS provider is using some other SaaS provider and relays the result … then your provider is not in control of the scalability!
How can you then be sure that your provider can scale, or even … how can you be sure that you can scale when the demand of your services becomes huge!?
It is very much a question about communication and also to have total control of your environment. To communicate with the CxOs that takes the final decision if you shall buy/sell the service it is important to be able to show them what they are interested in knowing, and formatted in a way that they get the level of details that they want to have. It is equal important then to have control on much more detailed or fine granular level. Example of techniques is UML for system architecture, and powerpoint to describe the high level. The glue that makes this possible is to use an Enterprise Architecture framework that can contain both high level views and fine granular views. Examples of frameworks to use is Togaf, Zachman, or Capgeminis IAF
SaaS definition discussion / hype?
Software as a service (SaaS) has become one of the latest hyped word that is on everyones lips theese days! SaaS is a thought/concept that really is affecting almost everyone today, it can be in their everyday work or it can be indirect because the business is done a bit different!
Is SaaS a new thing or have we seen it before? It is a new and revolutionary thing in the way that we have got a new context for delivery, the internet. This means that it is easier to provide services for a larger set of customers. Have we had SaaS before? yes, we have had services/software that is ready to use. It has even been outsourced and run by other organisations. (ASP – Application Service Providers) It has not been as visible and easy to use/start to use.
We can always discuss levels of service delivery or usage, and we have often seen bespoke systems that was run internally and we have seen application service providers that has been selling IT services in a very similar way. Yes there are differences, but I am sure that you can always find differences if you look for it. So we have had the service delivery before why does everyone talk about SaaS?
I think it (as usually) gets down to the business needs. We need to get a better TCO (total cost of 
ownership) or lower operational expenses, but we also need to lower the implementation cost of a system. Everyone has heard of monolitic ERP implementations that had a cost of implementation that is astronomical. (huge capital expense) It is very important for the software vendors of today to offer both low capital expense and low operational expense to their customers … how do we do that? I think that the path to success is to create solutions that fits the need of a segment, and focus on fast implementation of a system that is manageble over time … (that was kicking in open doors) But … this is the art of creating both good software and a library of best practices that can be used to accelerate the implementation. Compare the normal implementation time of SAP versus Microsoft Dynamics AX for example; MS Dynamics AX will be faster to implement, it will be more cost effective to operate and it will be easier to amend/adapt to the needs of the company. And yes, it is possible to find solutions for MS Dynamics AX that delivers the functionality needed. (and we have not even discussed usability …)
What about paying for the usage? When it comes to turning the tap and increase the flow of IT, that is one of the interesting things about SaaS … but that also shows that we still think about IT solutions and not Business solutions … Should we not take BPO (business process outsourcing) into consideration when we think of SaaS or even before? We can see BPO as the business version of SaaS, this comes back to the thinking of aligning business strategy and IT strategy! If we are considering SaaS we should absolutley consider BPO!
Do we need SaaS? (or at least the concept of services at demand) … yes, it is here to change the concepts of the IT business, but you need to take more things into consideration before happily run out and start to use SaaS
random work related stuff, and more 