Software as a service - News, Features, and Slideshows

News

• Salesforce.com acquires help desk service firm Assistly

  Salesforce.com has acquired help desk service provider Assistly for approximately US$50 million, the two companies announced Wednesday.

• Microsoft Office 365 goes live

  Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer launched the much-awaited Office 365 on Tuesday, after a beta program of about nine months, as the company responds -- some critics say belatedly -- to the rising popularity of cloud-based applications for collaboration and communication.

• MS Office alternatives: Many are trying, few are buying

  When it comes to deploying Microsoft Office alternatives such as Google Apps, Zoho or Lotus Symphony, enterprise IT managers are in a state of intense curiosity but are still not ready for widespread adoption, according to a new Forrester research report entitled "Market Update: Office Productivity Alternatives."

• Forrester: Public cloud growth to surge, especially SaaS

  On the heels of the controversial Amazon EC2 cloud outage last week, research firm Forrester published a timely report on the growth potential of the major public cloud categories.

• Finance's Role In Controlling Use Of SaaS

  When it comes to the decision whether to subscribe to a software-as-a-service (Saas) approach for certain IT functions, finance is where the buck should stop. Having data exist outside the organization can pose challenges to compliance, governance, and business intelligence -- all areas where the CFO rules.

• How SaaS will impact six key software categories

  As more sourcing executives consider incorporating SaaS solutions into their overall technology vendor landscape, the potential to significantly disrupt the current software market grows. And while SaaS adoption is expected to expand in the coming years, the challenge for sourcing professionals will be a lack of uniform adoption across the whole software market. In some software categories, SaaS will be a disruptive technology, in others the only option, and in many cases SaaS will have minimal impact.

• Business growth driving Specsavers' move to Google Apps

  Specsavers is migrating its 2,500 staff across the world to <a href="http://www.cio.co.uk/article/3257491/twenty-companies-to-watch-in-2011/">Google Apps</a> in an effort to ramp up the pace of <a href="http://www.cio.co.uk/article/786/specsavers-goes-global-cio-michel-khan-explains-his-vision/">expansion into new markets</a>.

• Controlling the cloud

  Analyst firm Ovum says governance of cloud computing is suffering from the same flaws that are affecting other IT governance areas.
  In a report entitled Cloud governance: An overview, Ovum says a new approach is needed as cloud computing can not thrive without an effective governance framework that promotes and ensures coordination between IT teams.

• A cloud computing shopping list for CIOs

  Facing strong concerns about control and security, the cloud-computing trend has drifted somewhat - away from the notion that all computing resources can be had from outside, and toward a vision of a data center magically transformed for easy connections to internal and external IT resources.
  Sales of cloud-related technology are growing at 26 percent per year -six times the rate of IT spending overall, though they made up only about 5 percent of total IT revenue this year, according to IDC's Cloud Services Overview report. Defining what constitutes cloud-related spending is difficult, the report acknowledges, though it estimates global spending of $17.5 billion on cloud technologies in 2009 will grow to US$44.2 billion by 2013.

• All shook up

  For all the vagaries of IT services, traditional IT outsourcing has always been quite tangible - servers, data centres, networks, specifications, man-hours, lines of code. The rise of cloud computing, however, is changing all of that with flexible, asset-free IT services available on an as-needed basis for more aspects of enterprise technology.
  Cloud services are a boon for many IT departments willing to forego customization: They help IT organisations chip away at hefty capital expenditures from back-end infrastructure to customer-facing software and everything in between. Consequently, the cloud is turning the traditional IT services industry on its head.

• Let it reign

  The concept of an infinitely flexible, agile, mobile, enterprise-friendly, omnipotent provider of all IT needs is as elusive as it is attractive. In many ways it was fitting that it should end up with the moniker cloud computing - a joke that cannot be lost on vendor executives charged with selling the nascent concept to suspicious information chiefs during the past couple of years.
  Elastic resource provisioning, software as a service, infrastructure as a service, platform as a service, pay-per-use servers and storage - cloud computing means different things to different people depending on the specific demands of their business.

• Ten cloud trends for 2010

  This year, it is expected many companies will stop talking about cloud computing and finally do something about it. This is where we will see the uptake of cloud services.
  As New Year business plans were drawn up, cost effective, time efficient and sustainable options were a high priority, making cloud computing a serious contender for IT services. Enterprises can expect the following:

• The next wave of IT services

  We constantly hear hype about how a given market is changing drastically. And given the economy, many companies we talk to tell us that the only thing drastic happening in IT services today is the rate reductions they're asking from their vendors. But after years of moving forward slowly, IT services is in fact about to change drastically. Here are a few reasons why, and what you can do about it.
  Changing global demographics

• Vendors ramp up cloud computing services

  IT services providers are continuing to invest in cloud computing offerings at an impressive pace &#8211; even though ongoing hype around cloud computing is leaving many customers confused as to its potential benefits, reports Ovum.

• SaaS ERP market to grow to US$193 million by 2012 in Asia Pacific

  The market for software-as-a-service (SaaS)-based enterprise resource planning (ERP) in the Asia Pacific (excluding Japan) is estimated to grow from US$35 million in 2008 to US$193 million by 2012, according to Springboard Research.
  Coupled with the low level of on-premise ERP applications penetration, the region is tipped to experience faster growth especially in the markets of China and India, pointed out Balaka Baruah Aggarwal, senior market analyst - emerging software at Springboard. The numbers were from the research firm's bulletin titled 'SaaS ERP in Asia Pacific: An Overview'.