Lars Fløe Nielsen

Other articles on the SaaS project

The Software as a Service (SaaS) Project
The SaaS project - part 2 - challenges and provisioning
The SaaS project - Part 3 - Plans and plan management
The SaaS project - part 4 - Orders and Operations
The SaaS project - part 5 - Metering and billing
The SaaS project - part 6 - Federation

The last three weeks, I and a very skilled team of developers and architects have had the pleasure of visiting the Microsoft Technology Center, just north of Copenhagen.

The purpose of this project was to build a proof of concept on Software as a Service, and at the same time cover and define some of the standards and elements that would be required in Software as a Service setup.

The participants of this project was Microsoft Technology Center (EMEA), Sitecore and a hosting provider, who each gave input and developer resources to cover five major scenarios.

The next couple of weeks, I will cover these scenarios through several Blog posts, as well as relay the experiences from an ISV perspective in a SaaS environment.

What is SaaS?

Software as a Service (SaaS) means delivering software over the Internet. Traditional companies have been running their own infrastructure, purchasing, installing and maintaining their software. In the SaaS scenario, a company, the software provider, is responsible the application (installation, maintenance, scalability, availability etc.) while another company, the tenant, pays for these services.

The tenant

The benefits from the tenant are obvious, regardless of the size of the company: The risk of software acquisition is greatly reduced and the company will not need to invest in application operations knowledge. It also means that the company for a time being can test the application in parts of their organization, and if successful, instantaneously roll it out to the rest of the organization.

However, there may also be drawbacks; costs of renting the software, especially for large scale companies may exceed the proprietary approach of traditional software acquisition. The organization must also trust the software provider to handle potential compromising data. Also, the ability for integration between the company’s existing software and the SaaS software may be decreased greatly.

Gianpaolo Carraro and Fred Chong from Microsoft have written an excellent article on the adaption of SaaS from an enterprise perspective.

http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/architecture/aa905332.aspx

The software provider

The benefits from the software provider are obvious; the application target market share is often increased and it’s possible to centralize upgrade and maintenance, hence reduce support for older or outdated versions of your software.

Risks also applies to the software provider; solutions built for SaaS require special architecture, and for existing ISV’s these requirements may end up in rewriting parts or the entire application.

The hosting provider and the ISV

While the most popular examples of SaaS, such as salesforce.com (www.salesforce.com) hosts the solutions themselves, this may not always be the case. Smaller software companies, or software companies that solemnly focuses on the product itself, such as Sitecore, will not be able or willing to configure a hosting center. In this scenario, they will be depending on a 3 part hosting provider. In this case the software provider is divided into two entities; the ISV and the hoster.

The SaaS incubation project

The SaaS incubation project is all about these 3 parties, and the requirements for these entities: The tenant renting the application. The ISV delivering the software, and the hoster, naturally, hosting the software.

In this article series about SaaS, I will thrive to describe the requirements for SaaS and the various aspects and scenarios that must be covered.  With a twist: It will be from a ISVs perspective; what the SOFTWARE must support.

Do not expect to learn everything about SaaS on this Blog. It’s my personal experience as lead solution architect that are relayed; Sitecore, Microsoft or the hoster is quite innocent.

As a final (personal) note

As a personal note, I must grant my highest regards to the developers that have been involved during the entire project; Sitecore and Sitecore Express very dedicated and professional developers, Søren and Sergey, Microsoft Technology Centers awesome team; Michel, Jimmy, Mario, Kevin and the 3 hardworking developers from the hoster (whom I cannot not mention at this stage). Also, my regards to the other involved advisors that have been willing to spend time on our project.