Getting Ahead in the SaaS Curve

Getting Ahead in the SaaS Curve

Dears,

There are many types of cloud computing, and each is progressing at a different rate. Software as a service (SaaS) refers to applications delivered as cloud services, and is in many ways the most mature of the cloud types. While this maturity varies by type of application, it is rare to find companies that are not using some type of SaaS. SaaS is likely to penetrate every company at one level or another. We often see SaaS coming into an organization through departmental business purchases. In instances like these, the IT department is the last to find out, and begins to fall behind the SaaS adoption "curve." This frequently means that IT has to clean up poor contracts, bad technology choices that prohibit good application integration, or, worse yet, SaaS services plagued with operational issues such as inadequate security. Therefore, it is important that companies get in front or quickly catch up to the SaaS adoption curve. There are four basic steps a company needs to take for SaaS:

Step 1: Determine the value of SaaS. As with any technology or delivery model, there are pros and cons to consider. A thoughtful analysis will identify SaaS implementation drivers and inhibitors.

Step 2: Develop a SaaS policy and governance document. This document should be neutral in regard to any particular application domain, but should be a collaborative effort between the business and IT. A corporate SaaS implementation and governance policy will ensure consistency of SaaS deployments across your organization.

Step 3: Evaluate vendors based on the specific needs of the company. If you did your homework in Step 2, you should have a reputable process that can be applied to each new vendor selection process you undertake.

Step 4: Engage in a continuous process of developing an integration road map on how SaaS applications will integrate with on-premises applications and other SaaS solutions deployed. Clear approaches should be identified (e.g., real-time, batch, etc.), including potential integration providers that could be used.

Step 1: Determine the Value of SaaS

SaaS has emerged as an alternative to traditional IT models for three primary reasons:

·         SaaS enables companies to fund software deployment from an operating budget.

·         SaaS helps companies with limited IT resources deploy software capabilities for which they otherwise could not budget.

·         SaaS helps companies deploy functionality quicker.

However, SaaS is not perfect, and has downsides and complications. Among these are the fact that SaaS applications cannot be counted as assets on a balance sheet (many enterprise requirements will be too simplistic and crude). Furthermore, sourcing IT from a SaaS provider will never absolve IT management of its responsibility, but will simply change the nature of the responsibility. Finally, factors such as security and integration will continue to be major challenges for all involved.

Step 2: Develop SaaS Governance and Policy

One key value proposition of SaaS is that the business organization has more control of the application, including procuring, configuring and paying for it. This enables the business organization to be more agile and responsive to end-user needs; however, it also has the potential to create inconsistency of SaaS deployments across the enterprise. For example, SLAs for different vendors will be separately negotiated across the enterprise, with inconsistent provisions for key issues such as uptime reliability, disaster recovery and/or data ownership, release management validation and application integration. If the company has a standard SaaS policy that includes contract requirements, SLAs, RFP templates, and roles and responsibilities for deploying a SaaS deployment, then the company will have a level of consistency across the enterprise that should help ensure that the company is protected from a reliability, security and disaster recovery perspective.

Step 3: Creating a SaaS Vendor Evaluation Framework

As the scope of business applications delivered via SaaS increases, more vendors will claim to have SaaS offerings. User organizations that want to leverage this deployment option must assess a potential vendor's SaaS strategy. Vendors vary in their commitment to SaaS, from offering it as a check box item for a RFI to basing their sole offering on it. Applying traditional on-premises evaluation techniques does not translate into the SaaS world. Understanding the viability of a SaaS vendor's operational infrastructure is one criterion that is not considered when companies are buying and installing on-premises software. Some of the leading Sis like Hitachi Consulting created a number of frameworks to aid in the development of a standard SaaS evaluation framework.

Step 4: Develop a SaaS Integration Strategy

Any large enterprise deploying a SaaS solution will do so in the context of already-deployed, on-premises applications. No large organization will completely remove its on-premises applications and replace them with a complete SaaS delivery model during the next five years. Therefore, the importance of having a strategy of weaving SaaS into a much broader application deployment strategy is critical. Although many SaaS solutions begin as isolated islands of functionality, requirements ultimately expand because of emerging business processes and/or business strategies (for example, acquiring a new company) that require the SaaS solution to be more integrated into the fabric of established on-premises applications. By 2012, 75% of large-enterprise SaaS deployments will have at least five integration or interoperable points to on-premises applications.

SaaS has some great advantages as well as unforeseen challenges. The challenges should not be a showstopper for adopting SaaS program. You may need to evaluate which is best operation that could go on to the cloud and learn the ropes while you get this on to the board

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