To state the obvious, businesses of all sizes are moving their applications to the cloud or renting software as a service (SaaS) instead of licensing or buying the software outright.
The number one reason people cite is cost. Businesses large and small are under the impression they can save a bundle by moving their apps to the cloud. At the same time, companies who handle a move to the cloud badly can suffer a negative backlash from their user community.
When you consider all the cost factors, like your time, energy and risk to your business, will you save money in the long run by going with SaaS? The short answer is no.
One thing is clear: businesses will pay less up front for cloud vs. on-premise. Modern SaaS systems are rented on a pay-as-you-go basis, or might have short-term contracts. Average license fees for equivalent on-premise software range from two to three years’ worth of SaaS subscriptions. Add in 20% annual maintenance when you buy and install your own software and you are in concept paying three years’ worth of subscription revenues up front for the same tools.
Deep Insight and Collaboration in the Cloud: A Customer Story
Recently, one of our customers, let’s call him PointInFact, had a very typical problem. After deploying a new version of its software, some user requests degraded horribly. Requests that should have taken half a second took up to a minute. Interestingly, the PointInFact team runs a multi-tenant SaaS solution in the AWS Cloud and relies heavily on cloud services. This reliance makes User Experience Management and fault domain isolation very challenging.
Back Story: Application Running in the AWS Cloud
PointInFact runs a SaaS service. Internally this results in a multi-tenant service where each customer has his own instance of the application he subscribes to. All of these applications and services are hosted in Amazon’s EC2 Cloud where they dynamically create new application environments and offload some functionality to AWS by using the provided services. As a SaaS business, customer satisfaction is very important to them, as a consequence they monitor all applications and services centrally and from an end-user and server-side perspective with Compuware APM.
Transporting HIPAA Best Practices to the Cloud
The people assigned to rethink the role of cloud computing by those charged with HIPAA best practices management and security have a daunting task on their hands these days. There are many decisions that should be made, and not a lot of emerging information and best practices.
However, as more cloud providers hit the market, many are offering HIPAA-compliant cloud services. At least, that’s what they are selling. The trick is to arm yourself with enough information to make sure you make the right choices, and move in the right directions.
The most important best practice is to understand the existing requirements, and then understand how the emerging uses of cloud computing could provide compliant and secure HIPAA solutions. The good news is that this is not the first time we’ve dealt with HIPAA data outside of our own data centers; we’ve been working with managed services, hosting, and co-location providers for years.
NetIQ to Exhibit at Cloud Expo Silicon Valley
SYS-CON Events announced today that NetIQ, a global, enterprise software company, will exhibit at SYS-CON’s 13th International Cloud Expo, which will take place on November 4–7, 2013, at the Santa Clara Convention Center in Santa Clara, CA.
NetIQ is a global, enterprise software company with a relentless focus on customer success. Our portfolio includes scalable, automated solutions for Identity, Security, Access, Governance, Systems and Application, Service, and Workload Management that help organizations securely deliver, measure and manage computing services across physical, virtual and cloud computing environments.
Cloud Expo Silicon Valley: Cloud Marketplace for ISVs
To succeed in the software business, you need good software and great business skills. The software part is probably already covered, but growing your business without busting the bank can be tough. That’s why partnering with SHI makes good business sense.
In his session at the 13th International Cloud Expo®, Greg Rusu SHI’s Senior Director of Cloud Product Management, will show how the SHI Cloud Marketplace, in combination with one of the industry’s largest and most successful sales force, can be a great way to grow your market share.
Cloud Expo: SHI Cloud Marketplace, Brokering for the Enterprise
In his session at the 13th International Cloud Expo®, Wade Yi, Managing Director & Head of Cloud Solutions at SHI, will discuss the technical and financial benefits of using the SHI Cloud Marketplace to discover, customize, and automate the provisioning of both large and small scale cloud services, using different providers and carriers. He will also discuss the advantages of integrating cloud service provisioning with existing corporate procurement processes.
Wade Yi is Managing Director & Head of Cloud Solutions at SHI, where he oversees the SHI cloud strategy, ecosystem partnerships, & sales enablement for all of SHI’s cloud solutions.
He joined SHI from HP where he served in a variety of roles including sales management, solution sales, ISV management and software business development. Prior to HP, he worked in software development, support and sales functions for two startups.
He has a PhD in Engineering from University of Maryland and an MBA from Cornell University.
New Game-Changing Technologies from Cisco
In these competitive times, how does a business like yours navigate required technology transitions and retain its edge? By changing the game and transforming the way you engage customers.
Watch this free webcast and learn how the game-changing Network Open Environment (ONE) from Cisco helps you capture new business opportunities by creating innovative customer experiences with greater IT simplicity and investment protection. In this webcast, you will:
See Inbar Lasser-Raab and Rob Soderby introduce the Cisco Open Network Environment (ONE) Enterprise Network Architecture—a next-generation technology.
Learn about new networking solutions that can help you stay one step ahead of technology transitions.
Hear customers discuss how they’ve used innovative networking technologies to solve IT challenges and affect their business.
What are the best practices for cloud governance within healthcare?
When you think of cloud computing in the healthcare vertical, you also have to think of security and governance. Indeed, the need to control and secure healthcare data in the cloud is a big issue, and thus cloud governance is critical.
On the whole, cloud computing needs governance to succeed. If you think about it, at the end state of the cloud computing implementation, we’ll have thousands of services and data elements under management. To control how they are accessed, added, deleted, and altered, we need a solid approach, processes, procedures, and technology. That is why we call it ‘governance,’ or, more specifically, ‘service governance.’
Service governance is important in the world of healthcare in the cloud for a few key reasons:
Laws and regulations within the healthcare vertical make it necessary to control access to data, services, and processes in very fined-grained and configurable ways.
- Cloud services that …
New EMC Storage Arrays & Software-Defined Storage Speed IT Transformation
EMC Corporation has kicked off a 24-hour, around-the-world live broadcast announcing new products that help give customers the speed they need to lead their IT Transformation. Today’s news includes revolutionary technology advances in the EMC VNX line of midrange storage, new capabilities for the world’s fastest growing reference architecture – EMC VSPEX, the upcoming general availability of EMC ViPR – a new Software-Defined Storage platform, and finally, a preview of “Project Nile” – which EMC expects to be the world’s first commercially-available complete, Web-scale storage infrastructure for the data center.
Cloud Expo Silicon Valley: Cloud Marketplace for Enterprise Customers
Setting up a single instance of a cloud application, let alone multiple ones, can be complex, time consuming, and prone to mistakes.
In his session at the 13th International Cloud Expo®, Alex Sousa, Senior Director, Cloud Solutions, at SHI, will show how the SHI Cloud Marketplace can quickly deploy sophisticated multi-tier applications across multiple geographically diverse servers, located at different cloud service providers.
Alex Sousa is Senior Director, Cloud Solutions, at SHI. He oversees productization aspects of the SHI Cloud Backup as a Service (Baas).
Combining business, technical, and legal expertise, Sousa is a cross-functional hybrid. Most recently, he was the legal counsel of two solar cell start-ups, where he drafted patents and negotiated commercial agreements. He was also in charge of building out and managing the datacenter at one of the start-ups.