- What kind of business changes/adaptations are needed in a SaaS model?
- Should we sunset on-premise product (or) keep it and offer hybrid solutions?
- Technically, is SaaS a feasible model for my product?
- What should be the SaaS development strategy – in-house development or cloud computing strategies?

Join Aspire and our partner Calia Consulting for an illuminating session on September 24th at 9 AM Pacific time, as they share and discuss the key considerations in making a SaaS transition.

Registration is FREE!

Click here to Regsiter:

https://www1.gotomeeting.com/register/736707585

Panelists:

Dani Shomron
SaaS Expert – Calia Consulting

Janaki Jayachandran
Business Unit Manager – SaaS Specialization, Aspire Systems

Visit any tech blog and I am reasonably sure you will see something about multi-tenancy (MT). In my humble opinion, it is an architectural style to serve multiple tenants (clients) with a single codebase. Many blokes swear by the necessity of MT for SaaS. Contrast this with the ASP model where each tenant has a separate instance/version of the software. The beauty of MT is that the same codebase is able to serve multiple org whose data may be co-located – with a physical/logical partition. Pundits claim that without MT, the holy grail of ‘mass customization’ in SaaS (i.e. economies of scale) cannot be achieved even in this era of commodity hardware. A builder looking to construct 50000 houses is well advised to go for apartment complexes rather than row-houses, right? Once you have different codebases (row-houses), as in the case of ASP, you will go mad sooner-than-later maintaining (i.e. bug-fixes, enhancements, customizations etc) all these distinct versions.

So with all these wonderful advantages of MT listed above, why do I say that MT is abused?

#1: MT is NOT new.

Apparently, apartment complexes called “insulae” have been constructed around ~100 AD in Rome: http://www.historyforkids.org/learn/romans/architecture/insulae.htm
We have worked with customers since the 90’s who designed (or had it designed by us) their software to be MT. And the words SaaS and multi-tenancy weren’t even born then. It is just that this style has gone mainstream now (atleast in the blogs). What became a necessity to some of our customers (after some not-so-successful attempts at other architectural styles) is now a well-known option to the beginner. There has always been some software or the other written to be multi-tenant, because of business or other exigencies.

#2: Hotmail

Wasn’t this service available through internet?” Didn’t it use the same codebase to deliver my mails to me and your mails to you? Of course, business applications (eg:CRM) are more complex than email – needing customized workflows, configurability, unique business rules etc but aren’t those part of the natural evolution process of software? I am not saying that MT is easy but does it seem rocket science?

#3: He who is a rich customer rules!

I read somewhere that SalesForce has a separate version of its software for its large tenant. It may be a rumor but in general, if a tenant accounts for 15% of your revenue, does he not deserve premium, customized service? So, MT seems to have been brought to its knees in front of a powerful (paying) customer.

#4: Anonymous: Those who know don’t speak; Those who speak don’t know

The hackers who have typically architected/designed multi-tenant apps seem to be the silent types, who dismiss all this hoopla about MT and prefer writing software (as against blogs). This paved the way for non/semi-technical thought-leaders/marketers/sales folks to usurp the buzzword and poison the internet forums. As they say, MT vessels make much noise:-) Am generalizing of course!

To conclude, I do understand that some of my arguments above are prejudiced and debatable but these are ramblings of an ex-engineer than a rational thought-out post of a seasoned marketer

There was a good response from Technology heads and Product Managers from companies already having SaaS as a delivery model and those looking to transition. The presentation can be found here upon registering, and answers to the questions discussed during the webinar can be downloaded here.

Alexey started the discussion with a hypothetical business case of a medical company offering a SaaS solution. The company had security challenges and he discussed the steps taken by their CEO, Bob to resolve these challenges. He talked about addressing security not just at the application level, but holistically at all levels in an organization. He discussed how Bob started looking at the product development and QA function and one by one looked at all the functions such as customer service, data center operations, internal network support, sales, HR, etc. Alexey emphasized how security should be addressed at a cultural level in an organization.

Jothi took the session forward covering in depth the key areas in application security which seems to be the major security challenge faced by any SaaS provider. She discussed Data Security, Access Control Security and Security in the Cloud.

Some key takeaways from the session were:

- Factors & Goals to be considered in Security
- Security as a Culture in a corporate setting
- Data Security: Storage Architecture, Design Schemas and Audit Trials
- Access Control Security: Authentication and Authorization
- Cloud Security: considerations in moving to a public cloud

If you’d like to know more about this webinar, or have any feedback, please feel free to contact jothi.rengarajan@aspiresys.com

- What is your Security policy? How secure is my data? Who can access my data in your company?
- How separated is my data from your other customers?
- How does your solution address authorization and encryption need?
- What kind of physical security measures are being followed?

Join Aspire for an hour long discussion with trusted experts, Alexey Lef, Chief Technical Architect – SciQuest and Jothi Rengarajan, Senior Technical Architect – Aspire Systems, as they share and discuss various “How To’s” of providing a secure SaaS solution.

Date : Thursday, August 13, 2009
Time : 11:00 AM ET/ 08:00 AM PT/ 04:00 PM BST/ 08:30 PM IST

Click here to register:
http://www.aspiresys.com/events/current-events/managing-security-threat-in-saas-essential-how-tos.html

Aspire Systems hosted a webinar recently, where Amy Wohl of Wohl Associates and Alex Ginger, Director of Active Operations Management International, a SaaS provider, discussed the two business models, in light of the current economic situation.

Some key take-aways from this session:

• How SaaS is redefining the software market
• Difference between on-premise and on-demand models: a)Differences in software development – when building a new SaaS product, migrating an existing product to SaaS, or supporting both the traditional and on-demand models.
  b) Differences in operations – maintenance, support and on-going relationship with customers
  c) Differences in sales & marketing – various channels and costs associated with it
• Need for the SaaS Business Model
• Case study of a successful SaaS solution – Workware™
• Managing SaaS profitability – key factors influencing cost and revenue, that contribute to profitability

Click here to view the recorded webinar or here to view the presentation.

Join Aspire Systems for a timely Webinar on the 14th May, 2009 at 11:00 AM ET / 08:00 AM PT featuring SaaS industry speakers Merrill R. (Rick) Chapman of Softletter and Richard Dym of OpSource discussing:

· Softletter research analyzing increased SaaS adoption

· Reasons/Factors influencing the SaaS wave

· SaaS prospects/opportunities

· The future of SaaS and SaaS companies

Register Here for this Webinar

While SaaS companies that use open source technologies, or a combination of proprietary and open source software, are quite common, there are very few SaaS companies who adopt an Open source business model.

Open source communities typically form around projects where there is a development problem/opportunity, so unless it’s something (the area of work of the SaaS provider) more than just a mundane business problem, SaaS providers may have a hard time gaining a volume to form a community of interested developers/users. It is also expensive for SaaS providers to adopt a pure open-source model, like say Wikipedia, as the costs of hosting the software on a continuous basis are not negligible.

A hybrid model with open source and commercial versions, which SugarCRM has adopted, makes better business sense as the commercial editions of the product allow revenue inflow to the company and in turn supports the open source user community. Contributions from the community, in turn, enhances the value of the software.

However, Sugar’s model also cannot really be called Open source SaaS, as only the commercial editions (developed by Sugar’s engineers) are offered as a hosted or on-premise solution and the open source edition (including extensions developed by the community) is available on Sourceforge.org or SugarExchange.com (the add-on marketplace where extensions are sold).

Other areas that need to be thought about and addressed from the provider’s end, when offering an open source SaaS, are the support, service delivery and management aspects of the software. But with SaaS gaining ever-increasing popularity, and being driven by user adoption, there’s a high possibility that there will be more companies who find Open source SaaS a new profitable business model.

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It’s certainly interesting how they feed off each other’s strengths and also create weaknesses in each other. Many SaaS providers, for example, use open source software (OSS) for its lower costs thereby driving open source growth. Open source vendors, on the other hand benefit from cloud computing and using web infrastructure services on a pay-per-use basis.

Open source licensing can create issues for SaaS vendors if it is not fully understood or complied with. A number of SaaS vendors may be incorporating open source code into traditionally licensed models unknowingly and without being aware of the violation until challenged. There is also repeated criticism regarding the security of open source software, which SaaS vendors need to take into account.

From the cloud computing end, although it is improving by leaps and bounds, reliability is something which SaaS providers and open source vendors have to worry about. Amazon’s S3 online storage services suffered two notable outages this year, which disrupted websites using the infrastructure service.

Those who believe open source or SaaS will win out over the other – due to the community contributions and support for open source software, or because open source software licenses will become irrelevant in the networked world – are wrong, because both of them can and will co-exist. What’s going to become more successful in the future is a SaaS revenue generating product that uses open source and is able to build a community as loyal as OSS communities which act as its sales force and becomes part of the development and PR team as well.

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With SOA, we have defined certain web-based interfaces which are specific to an existing system or module. It also has rendered it reusable too. Now, PaaS promises to extend these functionalities to the next level, wherein the whole platform would become accessible through a web browser. This means that enterprises now have to just develop and deploy their applications through a browser without shelling out any extra revenue on infrastructures.

It is agreed that PaaS readily helps create and deploy applications. However, the question here is, “Why should Enterprises adopt PaaS?” as they already have tools and technologies to meet the same goal. It certainly has some clear cut advantages such as no infrastructural costs, instant IDE, instant deployment, to name a few. They just have to choose the right platform depending on their needs and resources and subsequently, can shift their focus onto creating innovative applications, rather than the complex IT infrastructures. This would also mean the removal of critical barrier to entry for smaller ISVs.

The time has come when anyone with an internet connection can build various applications and deploy them across the globe. PaaS is here to stay, but it should be ensured that they are kept open so that the developers and designers do not get alienated from the mainstream.

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Jitterbit:This is an open source integration tool that helps to design, configure, test and deploy integration solutions. It supports most major document types and protocols. Like all integration products, Jitterbit is based on writing interfaces that translate simple user input into the queries or commands that insert and extract information into each system being integrated.

MuleSource:It offers an open source enterprise service bus (ESB) solution and has its origins in the open source Mule project. It provides Web Services support using Axis & XFire, integrates with Spring and provides out-of-the-box integration with many legacy, commercial products.

Talend Open Studio:This data integration software generates data integration processes in Java and offers Extract, Transform and Load (ETL) functions for data warehousing and analytics, working on scale out, commodity hardware grids. It includes over 100 native connectors for common enterprise applications. On the operational side, Talend handles data migration, data loading, synchronization or replication of databases and data exchange between systems.

Boomi: It is a provider of business integration solutions for small and mid-sized business (SMBs). Boomi’s ‘Visual Integration Technology’ enables integration of applications, trading partners and data using drag and drop features.

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