SaaS

64 posts

Social media app icons on a smartphone screen with a textured grey background, illustrating a mobile, social, cloud world

It’s a Mobile, Social, Cloudy, Insecure World

About 40 percent of Fortune 500 companies surveyed recently said they expect 15 percent or more of their applications to move to the cloud in the near future, Sarah Friar, managing director at Goldman Sachs, said Wednesday at ITSEF. That shift has even affected Goldman Sachs, “where we’re probably the most paranoid about letting go of these things,” she said. Cloud computing, mobile computing and social networking are reshaping the face of the information security […]

Runner's legs in motion on a track, illustrating the agility benefits of cloud computing

McKinsey Sees Agility Side of Cloud Computing

Back in April 2009, McKinsey set the cloud computing community afire with a presentation arguing that corporate cloud computing adopters might expend more money using cloud versus traditional data center resources. As reported by Steve Lohr in the NYTimes Bits blog: “The McKinsey study, “Clearing the Air on Cloud Computing,” concludes that outsourcing a typical corporate data center to a cloud service would more than double the cost.” Many in the cloud computing space, including […]

Investment spelled in letter tiles, illustrating investing in cloud computing ventures

MessageLabs Founder Bets on Cloud Computing

If—and it certainly appears to be the case—cloud-based computing, software as a service (SaaS) and mobile are the next wave of technology, it would make sense that venture capital orientates itself along similar lines. That is certainly the view of Notion Capital. Jos White, one of the two founding brothers was in London recently and spoke to The Wall Street Journal, Europe. Mr. White, and his brother Ben, were the people behind MessageLabs, a cloud-based […]

A black and white photo of a running track, illustrating cloud readiness for businesses

How to Tell If Your Company is Ready for the Cloud

Want to know if your organization has the right characteristics and culture to successfully adopt cloud computing? I recently ran across a new cloud computing study that might provide the answer. “Our approach was to try to look into the future and determine what capabilities and kinds of organizations are necessary for a successful migration to the cloud,” co-author Arun Sundararajan told me. Sundararajan (associate professor of Information, Operations and Management Services at the NYU […]

A lot of brown boxes that are open, illustrating apps unsuited to SaaS

SaaS Won’t Succeed With Some Apps

Given all the hype about the software-as-a-service model, you’d think that it could be applied to every category of software. Not so, says a new report from Forrester Research Inc. In fact, SaaS will be “a disruptive force” in software categories that account for about a quarter of global software spending but will have “little or no effect” on many of 123 market segments studied, Forrester analysts Liz Herbert and Andrew Bartels wrote. Forrester said […]

Bright light filtering through dense blue clouds in a vast sky, illustrating the upside of cloud computing

Every Cloud Has a Silver Lining

Cloud computing (Infrastructure-as-a-Service) has already proved its value to some businesses and specific applications. It provides a way to deploy and access massive amounts of IT resources, on demand, in real time. It drives better utilization of data center resources, reducing capital expenditures and operating expenses. Most important, it provides the scalability and agility to adapt to changing business needs. However, challenges remain with the Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) cloud computing deployment model. For enterprises that have […]

Hand holding a smartphone with colorful app icons, illustrating cloud computing's killer applications

Cloud Computing’s Killer Applications

The year 2010 will probably be remembered at the year that cloud computing “shaped” itself into a tangible concept, at least amongst those of us who care. 2011, on the other hand, will likely be the year in which IT figures out how to actually use cloud concepts. Of course there are success stories dating back two or more years, but what is happening so far in 2011 is a growing body of businesses, data, […]

Blurred figures walking, captured in motion, illustrating the blurring of cloud service models

The Lines Between Cloud Computing Models Are Blurring

The three dominant cloud computing models — Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS), Software as a Service (SaaS) and Platform as a Service (PaaS) — are changing fast, as cloud providers reach up and down the stack to offer as close to a one-stop shop as possible. To understand how these cloud computing models are evolving and converging, it helps to know the history, said Jeffrey Kaplan, managing director of ThinkStrategies Inc., a consultancy in Wellesley, […]

Ice cream cone with sprinkles, illustrating the main types of cloud computing

Cloud Computing: Four Favorite Flavors, Explained

Cloud computing is famous for being a metaphor instead of a technology, but that metaphor is increasingly hard for non-techies to understand. Many variations of cloud have emerged that have little to do with the initial vision that sparked interest— a public cloud with burst-up capability on demand. “Public cloud is not what most of our clients are talking about right now,” according to Chris Wolf, analyst for Gartner Group’s Burton Group consultancy. “Pretty much […]

Selective focus photo of bubbles, illustrating cloud computing hype versus reality

Cloud Computing: Bubble or Revolution?

Few technology trends have captured as much popular attention as Cloud Computing. The level of hype associated with the ‘Cloud’ hasn’t been seen since the hoopla created during the Dot.com era. As a result, there has been plenty of debate about whether the Cloud Computing phenomenon is headed to a similar demise. This quote is taken from a Seeking Alpha article by Jeffrey Kaplan, published in December 2010. Just a few weeks after Jeffrey’s comments, […]