SaaS and the symbiosis between IT & business
Originally posted on the IT trouble? Cognito it blog.
After attending yet another Cloud Computing Conference, where I had the chance to interact with various IT professionals on this high focus subject, I felt more or less that the same questions are getting asked over and over again.
- Is Cloud just a fad?
- How secure is the Cloud?
- But I don't want to put my data on the Cloud, now what?
- The Cloud's not for me because I have enough servers and computing power.
I can't attempt to answer all the questions in one go, but I wanted to talk about something that most (at least in the regional Cloud Computing talks I've been to so far) don't seem to fully address.
First, Cloud Computing is nothing new at all - only its use in mainsteam IT is (I use IT here to refer to IT departments). Hotmail was founded way back in 1996, and search engines (which can be considered applications running in the Cloud) were around since before then. Today, however, Cloud Computing has reached a stage where it is easily and readily available to every Tom, Dick and Harry. And you can be up and running in about 5 minutes!
Sadly, most of the standard Cloud Computing talks focus around Computing Power - something that is also known as Infrastructure-as-a-Service. IaaS means that you purchase infrastructure, or computing power to augment (or in some cases, replace) your in-house setup, or lack thereof. But there are more aspects to Cloud Computing: Platform-as-a-Service and Software-as-a-Service. I'll talk a bit more about the latter.
Software-as-a-Service is an offering that can be traced as far back to the late 90's, where a provider delivered his software from his datacenter, rather than on each customer's site. Today, this has taken phenomenal proportions - with everything from e-mail to CRMs and ERPs to games and you-name-its available in the 'cloud.'
Here's what I want to highlight: the real advantage of using SaaS and Cloud Computing in general, is not about its cost. It's about what I call the symbiosis between IT and business. Call it what you want really, but today IT is a tool for business to get better, faster. And any IT that bogs the business down - and most IT does - should be seriously looked at, and fixed.
