Cloud Computing & SaaS

Cloud Computing

The term “cloud computing” is being used to describe a continually growing list of computing products and services. So what is cloud computing? Following are some essential cloud attributes:

• Cloud computing offerings are services, not products. They allow customers to provision services instantly, and the services are delivered from remote locations by a third party.
• Cloud computing services are delivered via the internet, or via an IP VPN. And they’re accessible from any location, using an internet-enabled device.
• Cloud computing services are multi-tenant, meaning they allow multiple, diverse customers to share computing resources, which allows for economies of scale. Service providers serve multiple clients, or tenants, from central locations. These clients are partitioned in a manner that prevents one from impacting another's operations or accessing another's information. Security is integrated into the service.
• Cloud computing services are scalable and elastic. Customers can increase and decrease the number of users that have access to the services, exponentially, and they pay only for what they use.
• Cloud computing service enhancements, such as updates, are automatic, and automatic backups are integrated into services.

Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) is a category of cloud computing. SaaS enables on-demand use of software over the internet.

Cloud Market Drivers

The major reasons that businesses of all sizes are turning to the cloud are cost savings, time savings, and scalability. Cloud computing allows companies to reduce the amount of time spent implementing and managing their mission-critical applications, and to do things better and faster, thereby increasing their competitive advantage. And cloud computing allows companies to scale their business as needed. They can deploy business applications on demand, quickly bringing new business initiatives online, and just as quickly decommission non-profitable initiatives.

Forrester interviewed over 500 software decision makers about their reasons for moving to cloud computing. The top reasons included speed of implementation and deployment, lower overall costs, the ability to focus resources on more important projects, and improved business agility.

Software-as-a-Service

Businesses of all sizes are turning to Software as a Service (SaaS) solutions for everything from central enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems, corporate performance management (CPM) systems, customer relationship management (CRM) systems, payroll applications, workforce scheduling, project management, and more. According to Gartner, “SaaS is now commonplace and having a real impact on IT. Users should not wait, but should explore cloud and SaaS opportunities from new vendors.” Why is this? SaaS solutions solve many of the problems that have long plagued traditional enterprise solutions.

Before SaaS

Traditional on-premise applications are complicated and expensive, and require business to own and operate a huge variety of hardware and software. After years of data center growth and IT evolution, many businesses are left with complex, overgrown computing platforms that are chronically underutilized. These systems take up valuable data center floor space, depreciate quickly, consume large amounts of power and cooling resources, and can cause significant management headaches.

Furthermore, IT resources in the typical data center are dedicated to particular applications. This rigid architecture makes it hard for an IT organization to quickly adapt or respond to changing business demands, and it makes it difficult to share resources throughout an enterprise.

The Advantages of SaaS

By placing storage and server needs in the hands of an experienced outsourcer like Adaptive Planning, a company essentially shifts the burden of hardware and software management from its in-house IT team to a third-party provider, freeing up internal resources. Well-managed cloud computing can be much more reliable, secure, and private than typical in-house data centers. A third-party cloud service provider is likely to have superior security technology and expertise than a company trying to protect its own data. It can spread the cost of security over a number of customers, while an individual company has to shoulder the entire burden itself. Fundamentally, the SaaS model simply provides better value to customers.