SaaS: A Reality Check
Overcoming Barriers to Success

The alignment of business needs with innovative development and delivery technologies has fostered a bonanza of software as a service (SaaS) offerings. Specialized SaaS solution vendors provide applications that deliver real benefits—low startup time, a short end-user learning curve, manageable ongoing costs, configuration and re-configuration flexibility and continuous innovation and support. SaaS is popular because it can be deployed quickly, which usually means faster ROI—the holy grail for IT departments and line-of-business managers.

But SaaS applications are not perfect. They sometimes go down, no matter how bulletproof the data center that hosts them. When a SaaS application is designed for travel and expense reporting, employee onboarding or invoice processing, downtime is inconvenient but it rarely threatens operational viability. Not so for SaaS applications designed for ERP, order processing, logistics or customer support. The consequences are much more severe for the business when these applications are taken offline.

Moreover, organizations must get past other barriers to implementing SaaS. One concern for IT is the access SaaS applications need to large amounts of proprietary and potentially sensitive information that organizations may not be ready or even able to trust to an off-premise, shared environment. Another is the need to integrate legacy documents and information while "adapting their service-oriented architectures to seamlessly integrate across existing ‘siloed’ SOA implementations, external Web services and SaaS applications."1 As a result of these barriers,the benefits of SaaS are often frustratingly out of reach.

A Hybrid Model to Alleviate IT Concerns
Addressing the concerns of SaaS is necessary if enterprise IT executives are to feel comfortable with this model. One solution: deploy SaaS applications on a delivery and development platform that solves the shortcomings of SaaS. An enterprise SaaS platform would be optimized for collecting and securely managing information—either on premise or off—and delivering that information where it needs to go. An enterprise SaaS platform would enable organizations to:

• Leverage standards-based development tools and Web services, allowing easy integration of content with new and existing applications;
• Manage large files, high information throughput and complex business processes;
• Provide persistent cache for applications requiring fast and frequent access; and
• Maintain integrity between on- and off-premise data.

An enterprise SaaS platform would support multiple hybrid deployment models that vary depending on where the application and its data live, as illustrated.

These hybrid models may take the following characteristics:

• Pure SaaS: Applications and their supporting information reside in a hosted environment or somewhere in the cloud. Examples: talent recruitment and travel and expense reporting;
• Pure premise: Applications and information reside in an organization’s data center but leverage a service-oriented architecture and components that integrate with on-premise information and applications. Examples: services-enabled ERP and financial reporting;
• Federated: Certain information is trusted to off-premise storage but is accessed securely through customer-managed applications.
• Trusted: Sensitive information is maintained under the organization’s control but can be accessed by hosted or cloud-resident applications and authorized individuals. Examples: collaborative case management and marketing resource management.

Service Without Compromise
SaaS deployment does not need to be an "all-or-nothing" proposition. Organizations can determine how and where information and application resources are stored, protected and deployed. Using enterprise SaaS, they can:

• Store information and deploy the content applications entirely off premises;
• Manage content applications off premises while continuing to protect the information on premises; and
• Manage all content, no matter where it resides, while continuing to maintain the content applications themselves on premises.

Through these SaaS options, organizations of all sizes can match application deployment to the topology that best meets business needs and reduces operational costs. They can simply connect to information resources—applications, solution components or data—to perform specialized activities that generate real business value. And they can achieve the benefits of SaaS while addressing the concerns of IT executives for high availability and data security.

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EMC Corporation (NYSE: EMC) is a leading developer and provider of information infrastructure technology and solutions that enable organizations of all sizes to transform the way they compete and create value from their information. We combine best-of-breed platforms, software and services into high-value, low-risk information infrastructure solutions that help enterprises manage growing volumes of information—from creation to disposal—according to its changing value. Information about EMC’s products and services can be found at www.emc.com .

1 Dubey, A, Mohiuddin, J, & Baijal, "Emerging Platform Wars in Enterprise Software," © 2008.r