Software as a service - News, Features, and Slideshows

News

• Cloud mea culpa

  Nick Carr was right and I was wrong. Sort of, anyway.

• Incredible global support for Software-as-a-Service

  Half of Asia Pacific enterprises are shifting away from on-premises software to Software-as-a-Service (SaaS), according to new research by Gartner.
  SaaS's cost effectiveness, ease and speed of deployment, meant that nearly 90 per cent of organizations surveyed, in eight major countries in the Asia Pacific, Europe and the US, expected to maintain or grow their use of the 'remotely-hosted software rental' model.

• Why is Office online taking so long?

  The announcement earlier this week that Microsoft would offer fully web-based versions of SharePoint and Exchange brought the software giant further into the fold of hosted application providers, allowing it to compete with competitors new (Salesforce.com, Google) and old (IBM). But for Microsoft, even after the launch, some questions remained.
  The big one: Why will a fully web-based version of Microsoft Office not hit the browser until late 2009? Also, how will the emergence of hosted applications affect the company's business model, which garners a good chunk of its revenue from the high margins of installed, on-premise software?

• Asia-Pacific ready to embrace SaaS model

  Awareness and familiarity with Software-as-a-service (SaaS) across the Asia-Pacific region has reached an all time high, according to Springboard Research.
  Their finding is based on a survey of 530 CIOs and IT managers in India, ASEAN, China, and Australia and New Zealand.

• The three open-source challenges: Cloud computing, open web and mobile

  "We have come into real contention [for mindshare] in the enterprise," said Tim O'Reilly, CEO at O'Reilly Media, in his keynote address at OSCON, this week's Open Source convention in Portland, Oregon. "So we should be patting ourselves on the back, right? I'm not so sure."

• Why companies still shun SaaS

  The enthusiasm for and growth in the software-as-a-service (SaaS) market cannot be discounted. SaaS has become a viable and cost-effective (initially, at least) means of application delivery for the small, midsize and even large businesses.

• SAAS appeal, with a catch

  Small to medium-sized enterprise (SME) information technology managers are torn between the perceived cost benefits of an on-demand application business model and the potential lack of data security in such offerings.

• 10 technologies to work better

  The right technology can encourage strong business growth and cut
  costs. Here are the applications that are driving innovation:

• The case for outsourcing email management

  When global staffing firm Adecco Group began an effort one year ago to consolidate and outsource its five data centers into one, Dave Bossi came to the realisation that moving the data center would also move three separately managed Microsoft Exchange email servers of different versions and a fourth legacy email technology-with potentially huge disruption to 10,000 email users. Bossi, the North American vice president of IT, thought this might be an opportunity to rethink the company’s email strategy. “Email tends to get lost in the mix. It becomes an afterthought,” Bossi says. Unless, of course, something goes wrong.
  Bossi’s case for outsourcing broke down like this: If Adecco moved the email servers to a separate outsourced provider, the email systems would be unaffected in the event of any trouble (like network overloads) at Adecco’s data center. Having a dedicated email provider also makes administering email accounts, managing servers and handling frequent software patches more efficient and less dependent on other data center resources. It shifts the responsibility for malware protection to a specialist-and eliminates the need to manage anti-malware appliances. CIO Alwin Brunner liked Bossi’s logic. Adecco is consolidating its four email platforms into one, which is hosted by USA.net (separate from Adecco’s outsourced data center that IBM manages).