In 
EDITOR'S NOTE
First a chicken-and-egg question: did the concept that initially start off with software-as-a-service catch the fancy of an e-commerce behemoth like Amazon, which saw an opportunity in offering its spare server capacity as a Web service, on a pay-per-use basis?
Or, was it the other way roundthe onset of Web services led to experiments in SaaS? (After all, its the Internet that made such concepts thinkable in the first place.) Whichever is true, the concept has really taken off such that the markets are abuzz with phrases like software-as-a-service, hardware-as-a-service, platform-as-a-service, infrastructure-as-a-service, and so on.
Indeed, the era of everything-as-a-serviceXaaShas begun!
From IT managers perspective, issues like connectivity and reliability often tend to push XaaS aside in favour of traditional on-device licenses. Moreover, since XaaS is often delivered over the cloud, it would be difficult to form service level agreements that dont have elements of haze built-in, which is something IT managers would certainly not appreciate, and rightly so.
For now, it will be safe to stay with those XaaS offerings that have matured and have received favourable feedback from user organisations, especially when it comes to deploying enterprise-wide applications that need a high uptime.
An immediate question that comes to mind is while talking about data centre transformation is why 3.x, particularly when enterprises are yet to fully transform into 2.0 entities. While there can be multiple answers to the question, the simplest one will be that a 3.0 data centre will provide a necessary foundation on which a 2.0 enterprise can be built.
As is common to all new technologies, various XaaS offerings have shown varying degrees of maturity and robustness, though the early teething problems seem to be over and behind.
The web mail services, which individual users and smaller organisations are already familiar and comfortable with, helped test and mature SaaS as a concept in a clearly demonstrative manner. In fact, web mail service providers already have substantial revenue streams coming by way of powering e-mail services of some very large enterprises.
A discussion on XaaS would be best initiated and the developments best exemplified with the mention of two pioneers: Salesforce.com and Amazon. Salesforce.com is undoubtedly regarded as a SaaS leader, with its pronounced focus on CRM. The company is now also firmly positioned in other XaaS categories such as platform-as-a-service.
Amazons Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) is among the best known, which according to Amazon, is a web service that provides resizable compute capacity in the cloud. It is designed to make web-scale computing easier for developers.
EC2 can be used in conjunction with Amazon Simple Storage Service (S3), which is web-based storage service, as also with Amazon SimpleDB and Amazon Simple Queue Service (Amazon SQS) to provide a complete solution for computing, query processing and storage across a wide range of applications.
Benefits and considerations
The most important benefit of XaaS lies in the associated pay-as-you-use model, which allows user organisations to avail the IT product or facility without committing an upfront expense for procuring the product or the license, it has seen a rapid embracement by enterprise over the past couple of years, given the constraints posed by the sudden economic crisis.
However, it is important not to consider pay-per-use and XaaS as inseparable concepts. In fact, pay-per-use was employed by XaaS providers more as a matter of strategy than a compulsion. Economic slowdown has prompted even traditional vendors to come up with different forms of pay-per-use options... for that matter, XaaS itself can be a viewed as a delivery strategy, which has worked so well that its now set to become the new paradigm.
The pay-per-use model, however, is not something even XaaS vendors may necessarily hold on to under all circumstances. A contract pricing for XaaS is very much possible and may be applied for the benefit of both the buyer and the vendor in instances of large user organisations.
XaaS can be a good bet when matured and proven offerings are being considered. It is also worth considering when new software or solutions for non-core functions are being tested, as it lowers costs and risks in the event of a failure. For other staple application areas, its always a good idea to look for success studies and robust proofs of concepts when evaluating a XaaS offering.
It is also important to explore the possibility of entering into service level agreements with XaaS vendors and service providers, wherever possible, as it will make the vendor more answerable in cases of outage or other such failures.
Embracing SaaS
For any given application or function, you can determine your SaaS readiness by plotting your organizations needs and expectations on each continuum, using the below Figure as a guide.
Each continuum can be subdivided into three segments, representing traditional, SaaS, and hybrid approaches.
If you mark all three segments in the rightmost column, youre ready to explore making the move to SaaS. Marking all three segments in the leftmost column means you should probably stick with a traditional on-premise solution for this application. Any other combination suggests that a hybrid approach might be appropriate; explore the marketplace to see if you can identify any solutions that are right for you.
Finding the right place on each continuum involves taking a number of considerations into account:
- Political considerations: Sometimes, the decision can be short-circuited by resistance from within an organization. Test-drive deployments might sometimes help convince risk-averse managers to approve pilot projects.
- Technical considerations: If an important application requires specialized technical knowledge to operate and support, or requires customisation that a SaaS vendor cannot offer, it might not be possible to pursue a SaaS solution for the application.
- Financial considerations: Factors that can affect the TCO of a SaaS application include the number of licensed users; the amount of custom configuration you will have to perform to integrate the SaaS application with your infrastructure; and whether your existing data centres already provide economy of scale, thereby reducing the potential cost savings of SaaS.
- Legal considerations: Some industries are subject to regulatory law in different parts of the world, which imposes various reporting and recordkeeping requirements that your potential SaaS solution candidates cannot satisfy.
Editorial Panel
Sushil Kumar, LeaderIT, Marathon Electric
Yogesh K Sharma, HeadERP, DP Jindal Group
Sheela Gusain, Associate S/W Engineer, Impetus
S Ojha, ManagerIT, Birla Tyres
Editorial coordination: Deepak Kumar
Add new comment