Sign in
Michael Platt's WebLog
Computer Engineering
Options
Blog Home
Share this
RSS for posts
Atom
Search Blogs
Tags
App design
Architecture
blogcasts
LINUX
Mainframe
Modelling
Novell
Other
Pages
SOA
Software Factories
Stories
UNIX
Archive
Archives
December 2006
(1)
August 2006
(6)
July 2006
(20)
June 2006
(13)
May 2006
(20)
April 2006
(11)
March 2006
(32)
February 2006
(3)
October 2005
(1)
September 2005
(6)
August 2005
(10)
May 2005
(2)
April 2005
(6)
March 2005
(18)
February 2005
(6)
January 2005
(4)
December 2004
(2)
November 2004
(2)
September 2004
(1)
August 2004
(5)
July 2004
(6)
June 2004
(7)
May 2004
(9)
April 2004
(12)
March 2004
(16)
February 2004
(14)
January 2004
(1)
Wither the Server in a SaaS world
TechNet Blogs
>
Michael Platt's WebLog
>
Wither the Server in a SaaS world
Wither the Server in a SaaS world
Michael Platt
21 Jul 2006 2:15 PM
Comments
1
Server based systems such as ERP, CRM, email, database and collaboration are well understood as single standalone applications today. They provide the highest levels of service, reliability, scalability, availability, security and integrity and are what enterprises run on. Enterprises will continue to require the highest levels of security and data integrity that only server based systems can provide and so there will be the need for server based systems for the foreseeable future.
It is clear however that not all users or services require the highest levels of security, availability and integrity; the CEO of an organization has different needs of an email system than a factory floor worker, the CIO requires different application access than a part time agent, a salesman in the field needs different levels of Sales Force Automation support than a person in technical support.
In many cases it is both beneficial and cost advantageous to outsource these users and applications to an externally hosted or provided solution such as a hosted or managed service or even a full Saas service.
We need to think about how this server / service SLA dichotomy will effect the design of both the SaaS and the server systems going forward. For example the present server systems will have to recognize and work seamlessly with not only the present client based systems but also the managed and SaaS based systems in a federated style which gives a single enterprise image. The CIO and the part time agent will want the same email domain even if their mailboxes are hosted in different systems in different organizations thousands of miles apart.
Server systems will have to support federation not only at the organizational level but also intra organization and even into the consumer base. They will have to do this at the security level, the directory level, the email level and even the application level. This is the real challenge of SaaS to the enterprise.
1 Comments
Comments
Loading...