Talk:Software as a service/Archive 1

IDC Link

Note that the links to IDC do not seem to work. As such they should be removed.Brian Ford (talk) 19:03, 18 November 2007 (UTC)

Ellison

Needs clarification: "The applications Ellison founded, NetSuite and Salesforce.com"

According to the Salesforce.com article, "The company was founded in 1999 by former Oracle executive Marc Benioff"

Samparker 18:54, 4 December 2005 (UTC)

Larry Ellison founded Oracle, a database company. The software he created served as the basis for SaaS, in fact, Larry Ellison was one of the first to preach the virtues of Internet Software vs. Client Server Software. When he moved his entire company (consisting of thousands of databases) to a web-based infrastructure, he claims to have saved his company millions of dollars. --JennyRad 10:59, 24 June 2006 (UTC) But Salesforce was founded Benioff. Are you disputing that claim? Brian Ford (talk) 19:03, 18 November 2007 (UTC)

Ellison was an early/initial investor in both Salesforce and Netsuite, that is where that comment is coming from. To call him a "founder" based on that is probably misleading. Peter Laird 02:22, 28 June 2008 (UTC)

SaaS Shortcomings

There are a couple of notable weaknesses in the SaaS model which should perhaps be mentioned.

1. Since the system is completely dependant upon the Internet connection of the client, if that Internet connection is disrupted for any reason the client loses all access to their applications and possibly data. [This is the nature of the Internet. If your car breaks down it's hard to drive. If the phone line running up to your home breaks it's hard to talk over a land line. There are work arounds. Brian Ford (talk) 19:03, 18 November 2007 (UTC)] This also means you have to be careful in choosing your SaaS provider -- if they have a single datacenter and that center is located in, say, New Orleans, you may lose access to your apps and data if another hurricane rolls thru. [Yet another obvious observation. Brian Ford (talk) 19:03, 18 November 2007 (UTC)]

2. The system is completely dependant upon the Internet connection of the client and no ISP is going to give you 100Mbps switched bandwidth to the SaaS site. There are all kinds of potential performance issues. An internal server may cost more to maintain, but it's also going to be considerably more responsive. [If a web based app is designed to need more bandwidth than an average user might have isn't that a bad design? The same can be said for an "internal server". This point desn't seem to add value to the conversation or the SaaS entry. Brian Ford (talk) 19:03, 18 November 2007 (UTC)] -- I disagree. The article exists to educate people about SaaS, and this is one example of information that must be considered before the article can be said to fairly describe SaaS.--Mooncaine (talk) 15:36, 31 July 2008 (UTC)

3. If the SaaS site is hosting your data how can you ensure that the data is secure? If you miss a payment on your hosting fee will they hold your corporate data hostage to force payment? If the SaaS company goes bankrupt or is somehow taken over are you going to have to fight to get control of your data again? [How secure is the bank? How secure is your employer? This point belabors the point that there is some inherent risk. Brian Ford (talk) 19:03, 18 November 2007 (UTC) ]

4. The service provider can remove customer's access with or without notice if there are payment, legal, agreement, law enforcement, or other issues. Or if there are errors which cause the service providers to believe there are such issues. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 12.155.51.150 (talk) 18:52, 17 February 2010 (UTC)

Obviously I'm not a great fan of the ASP/SaaS model for mission-critical applications. ---B- 22:44, 26 March 2006 (UTC) Not a fan; you don't say? Most of these "shortcomings" don't seem to have been well thought out. Brian Ford (talk) 19:03, 18 November 2007 (UTC)

Many of the issues you raise are a function of the hosted nature of most SaaS offerings. The rise of virtualization technologies coupled with the emergence of the software appliance leads to the possibility of non-hosted SaaS - where the customer runs the entire stack on-site (or at their choice of co-lo facility) but the stack is still a black-box, maintained and supported by the SaaS vendor. Essentially, move the physical location of the SaaS system without changing any of the service and business model involved. Bpjadam 15:06, 27 June 2006 (UTC)

I think that Brian Ford's rebuttals are unfounded. Web based apps are less responsive than desktop apps, period. Security is a concern, much moreso when passing data on the internet. Depending on the internet does introduce more risk than just using a desktop app on a local hard drive. All of the points that Brian Ford is attempting to discredit are valid and should be included in the article. 24.143.70.245 (talk) 09:34, 26 June 2008 (UTC) -- I agree. I cannot help but think that Brian Ford represents only one side of a debate on the value of SaaS. A Wikipedia article is not a place to present a one-sided article about a topic for which there are, clearly, divergent opinions among the readership.--Mooncaine (talk) 15:36, 31 July 2008 (UTC)

The article states that SaaS is also another name for Utility Computing. Utility Computing is however providing and using hardware/computing power and not Software —Preceding unsigned comment added by 212.136.56.20 (talk) 12:43, 23 November 2007 (UTC)

I would also question the bias of this article, it appears that the author is pro-SAAS and is reluctant to mention any of its shortcomings. If SAAS was as great as the author would have you believe every business in the world would have converted their infrastructure to SAAS which is clearly not the case. I'll admit there are benefits but sighting security as one of them is misguided this is clearly one of the reasons business are likely to keep away from SAAS. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 195.245.252.204 (talk) 10:22, 30 September 2008 (UTC)

However

I agree with you that SaaS is obviously connection dependant [sp. dependent] , and the inherent risks that lie within that fact. However, more and more companies are becoming very web-oriented. The jobs that are part of this web-oriented structure can easily be identified as: Those who get to go home for the day, because the ISP is down. And currently, there are a lot of those already.

Currently, ISP's do not provide companies with that ultra-high-speed pipe, but as SaaS increases in popularity, so will the understanding of ISP's to these companies.

I don't agree with you on your third point. With respect to WrappedApps.com 's solution, only the applications themselves are hosted on the SaaS providers' servers, not data. And if data must be stored remotely, then most certainly a compan's IT legal experts would not sign a contract with any 'held-hostage' data clauses. As well, if a company can't afford to pay the fees for their employees to use the software, then there are some serious problems with that company, as SaaS should be more economical than buying high-cost multi-user licenses.

Market Size

I don't know where to add this in the article but i think it is interesting nonetheless:

in 2005 the market for SaaS had a size of about 3.35 bill.$; it is expected to grow to about 12 bill.$ by 2012 [The economist, April 22nd 2006; pp. 60-61]. --89.51.71.168 18:41, 29 May 2006 (UTC)

thankyou —Preceding unsigned comment added by 66.165.23.31 (talk) 23:50, 24 April 2008 (UTC)

Multi Tenancy

One key point which must be made is that SaaS applications should include a multi-tenant architecture. Multi-tenant means that the database model is built to support several different entities on the same database, although those entities can never see each other's data. They share the database however, making the system more scalable at a far lower cost.

Multi-tenancy is not a new idea. In fact the original computer systems built for business, used this model. Think of ADP, as an example. Thousands of companies keep their information on the same database and machine at an ADP processing center; however, they never see each others data. Multi-tenancy is a key feature required for affordable, utility computing.

The topic of whether Multitenancy is required to be SaaS is controversial, and I think most in the field would argue that this isn't a requirement. In order to scale to large numbers of customers with SaaS, MT is definately preferred. But for SaaS providers that only target small numbers of customers, Single Tenant may be the right call. See Gianpaolo's blog for a good discussion. Peter Laird 02:22, 28 June 2008 (UTC)

Payment Models

It seems to me that this page is missing a payment model: "pre-pay" or "pay-as-you-go", as it were. Works just like a pre-paid mobile phone or Oyster card or whatever. I only know about it from FORscene but I can't believe there aren't other specialist web-services using the model ... I just don't know of them. Anyone? --JennyRad 10:59, 24 June 2006 (UTC)

"SaaS providers"

IMO the list must be spllied (huh? Brian Ford (talk) 19:03, 18 November 2007 (UTC)) by brief description which service exactly is provided. For example, Google is listed here. What kind of software it delivers to customers? List of Google products doesn't give a hint. `'mikka (t) 16:43, 3 October 2006 (UTC)

I have removed the external links and added links to Wikipedia articles. We really don't want to open this list up to external links.—WAvegetarian•(talk) 19:07, 17 October 2006 (UTC)

Webdex is a SaaS company. Someone continues to delete it from this list and other pages. Who makes these decisions? And on what grounds? Ranaweeram 21:47, 6 November 2006 (UTC)

Most probably on the grounds of low notability. Wikipedia is not Yellow Pages. `'mikkanarxi 00:58, 7 November 2006 (UTC)

Please read the notability inclusion guidelines.—WAvegetarian•(talk) 22:11, 13 December 2006 (UTC)

IMO the list should be removed entirely, as otherwise we'll have nothing but endless debates on who does or doesn't qualify. Let the article be strictly about the practice of SaaS, and not be a linkfarm for providers. Fan-1967 17:00, 28 December 2006 (UTC)

SaaS is a Business Model and an Industry and is thus much more than a "delivery method"

I'm a SaaS focused venture capitalist and I think this entry is a year or two out of date - some people still use the term this way but I don't think it reflects the most prevalent understanding of the term today. We have a database of 500 SaaS companies and have talked with many of them and few would agree with the definition this way. Lots of the old line client-server software people like to categorize it this way but that doesn't make it right. salesforce.com is so fundamentally different than an ASP it's not useful to put them under the same term. It's akin to calling "e-mail" a delivery method for a letter.

while the one-many distinction is important, it doesn't distinctively identify a SaaS company - an ASP, for example, could host and resell a multi-tenant app created by someone else but that wouldn't be SaaS, it would still be an ASP

to understand this best one needs to look from the perspective of the app provider not the consumer

ASP - a company delivering an application through the internet that they did not develop and do not own

SaaS - a company that developed a "net-native" or "web-native" (i.e. that is designed from inception for use by customers through the Internet) business application that is:

   * Environment-centric in that is designed and implemented in only one operating system and database,
   * Multi-tenant in that multiple customers are served simultaneously in one instance of the application, and
   * Hosted in an Internet data center and not on the customer’s premise

Subscription pricing is common but not necessary (there are transaction based SaaS pricing models as well).

Client-server software companies that offer a hosted version of their application are thus not SaaS. That is just software delivered differently.

While companies such as Google and Yahoo! meet the technical definition above, SaaS is understood to refer to B2B applications not B2C

I'm new to wikipedia (as an editor not user) so I didn't want to just stick this in, but if a real wikipedian wants to do a bit of research I think you will find plenty of support for a modification of the definition along these lines. If nothing happens I'll dig through my stacks of industry research when i find the time and provide some supporting citations

There is a lot more that could be done to build out this entry, but until we get the basic def right it feels premature SaaSVC 04:35, 26 January 2007 (UTC)

Useful article. But let us improve the article if needed. I came accross this web page which may add to our understanding of the issue.

Sanjiv swarup (talk) 02:53, 12 June 2008 (UTC)

thanks!for your above mentioned link it really made me understand abt the issue.Anoopnair2050 (talk) 17:15, 24 July 2008 (UTC)

SaaS Enablement for ISVs

The section SaaS Enablement for ISVs looks like a classical example of advertisement to me. If no one objects I'll remove the whole section altogether. --Pkchan 09:48, 26 February 2007 (UTC)

SaaS Reference App

• LitwareHR: A SaaS reference implementation meant for guidance purposes.(Ariel Schapiro 14:18, 20 March 2007 (UTC))

Coinage

I am removing the following sentence. "The term SaaS was coined by John Koenig for a non-profit conference in March of 2005 and has become the industry adopted reference term, generally replacing the earlier terms On-Demand and ASP (Application Service Provider)." Firstly it is unsourced. Secondly, it is not completely true - there is still considerable debate among experts about the preferred term for this concept - see for example Poll: Webware, SaaS or what?. --RichardVeryard 20:25, 12 April 2007 (UTC)

I have found an earlier use of the term "Software as a Service" - Engines Emerge That Will Drive Software as a Service. The webpage is undated, but the author informs me that the article was written in March 2001. However, this is not the earliest use of the "software-as-a-service" term. See for example this note from an eBusiness Strategy conference in September 2000. And here's a report from June 2001 indicating that Citrix were downplaying its former emphasis on "software-as-a-service". The evidence suggests that the term may have been coined by Traver Gruen-Kennedy, then vice president of strategy at Citrix. --RichardVeryard 22:50, 12 April 2007 (UTC)

What's going on here? I have presented evidence that the term was in use in 2000/2001. Someone has deleted my edits and restored the unsubstantiated (and already challenged) claim that the term was coined in 2005. Repeatedly using the word "nonsense" in the edit summary but without having the courtesy to explain themselves on this Talk page. I don't particularly want to play edit ping-pong, but I can't see why Koenig's claim should stand without evidence. --RichardVeryard 22:10, 13 April 2007 (UTC)

I have now removed the claim that it was coined in 2005, and included the evidence of earlier circulation. However, I have no objection to the weaker claim that the 2005 conference contributed to the widespread adoption of this term - although it would be good to see some concrete evidence of this (other than the conference's own publicity material). --RichardVeryard 09:22, 15 April 2007 (UTC)

I agree that the earlier claim, well cited, should stay. I did change "caught fire" into "came into wide use" to be a bit more encyclopedic. Perhaps the later claim could be referenced as evidence that it spread further at that time? ++Lar: t/c 13:04, 1 May 2007 (UTC)

Unfortunately, the website cited as a reference for the 2005 conference no longer seems to display any relevant information. But even if the appearance of the acronym can be accurately attributed, I'm not convinced that the mere coining of an acronym for an already-circulating concept is an event of encyclopedic significance. What is possibly interesting is the "tipping point" at which the concept started to be widely discussed and understood - and it is possible that the conference may have had some role here. --RichardVeryard 13:34, 1 May 2007 (UTC)

SaaS Adoption

I think the following paragraph could use some rewording (emphasis added)

Computing itself is a commodity: In the past, corporate mainframes were jealously guarded as strategic advantages. More recently, the applications were viewed as strategic. Today, people know it’s the business processes and the data itself—customer records, workflows, and pricing information—that matters. Computing and application licenses are cost centers, and as such, they’re suitable for cost reduction and outsourcing. The adoption of SaaS could also drive Internet-scale to become a commodity.[7]

The italicized text above is opinion. In many cases, applications continue to be viewed as strategic assets. (For certain, applications are strategic assets for the SaaS provider!) Dschwarz 03:33, 12 July 2007 (UTC)

POV Check

Using the example of SuccessFactors as a SAAS provider to Wachovia provides the vendor advertising, as it links to their press releases on their site. This does not follow the Wikipedia:neutral point of view guidelines and should be removed. PRlady 20:25, 10 September 2007 (UTC)

I agree! Psteele01 21:20, 4 October 2007 (UTC)

removed POV material, if you think that the article needs more work to become NPOV, please go to Wikipedia:Neutrality_Project and post it there. Λua∫Wise ^(talk) 15:44, 7 January 2008 (UTC)

Comment to Editors interested in this article

QUOTING FROM ARTICLE

"SaaS was originally considered a potential security and operational risk. Many businesses wish to keep their information technology operations under internal control. However, there is a counter-argument that the professionals operating SaaS applications may have much better security and redundancy tools available to them, and therefore the level of service may be superior in many cases. SaaS applications pose some difficulty for businesses that need extensive customization. SaaS vendors have made progress however, with both customization and publication of their programming interfaces. In addition, the availability of open source applications, inexpensive hardware and low cost bandwidth combine to offer compelling economic reasons for businesses to operate their own software applications, particularly as open source solutions have become higher quality and easier to install."

I have singled out this paragraph as an example of the general problems with this article.

The first two sentences talk about a concern that is likely to be raised by people in any organization that is considering moving an important application to SaaS.

Paragraph three goes into what I think of as "sales mode": "professionals operating SaaS applications etc etc". The concern about loss of internal control is at best only partly addressed by the claim that the SaaS applications are developed and operated by "professionals". This is a good argument in a sales presentation, because it sounds good, but it does not belong in an encyclopedia.

Moving on, "customization" is a new issue and should have a new paragraph.

The next sentence, "SaaS vendors have made progress etc etc" is back in sales pitch mode. It is not really a specific factual statement about customization, but a general reassurance.

The last sentence of the paragraph has little to do with the rest of the paragraph. It strikes me as pretty much pure sales pitch.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

The article is very wordy, IMO.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

== what about adding other types of services that came from SaaS like... ==Anneaholaward (talk) 18:51, 20 May 2008 (UTC)

from SaaS adoption:

Computing itself is a commodity: In the past, corporate mainframes were jealously guarded as strategic advantages. More recently, the applications were viewed as strategic. Today, people know it’s the business processes and the data itself—customer records, workflows, and pricing information—that matters. Computing and application licenses are cost centers, and as such, they’re suitable for cost reduction and outsourcing. The adoption of SaaS could also drive Internet-scale to become a commodity.[7]

What about mentioning the other as a service technologies that are popping up because of SaaS?

like

Communications as a Service from the Gartner report

or

Voice as a Service from the VoIP industry

I did an analysis of all of the "aaS" variants and created a visual map and reference guide. If people find this useful, please add it to the External Links section. Peter Laird 02:22, 28 June 2008 (UTC)

---

I agree, the article comes across as a complete sales pitch, and far too optimistic. There are quite a few risks that are entirely ignored. One example would be that the provider has all of your data. Is it secure? (I wouldn't bet on it, if your internal security is any good. Many large on-line shops can't even protect lists of credit card numbers.) If they leak your proprietary data, what are your recourses? Can you get copies of your data that can be used elsewhere? Etc. etc. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 203.212.48.103 (talk) 13:59, 16 June 2008 (UTC)

See Also

I suggest removal of this link : Integration as a Service

Sanjiv swarup (talk) 03:06, 2 July 2008 (UTC)

Done. Carl.bunderson (talk) 00:50, 5 July 2008 (UTC)

Centralized Computing

This seems to be a business model for centralized computing (albeit on a public network and not a private network (intranet)). It's not really a technical topic unto itself, given what I read here. I don't think this is clear enough in the article, as it mixes technical information with the business model information. This includes numerous other related articles regarding the business model of hosting an application on a server (i.e. application service provider, and having clients download it. I think this topic might need a clean-up and some merges and such. Compare and contrast "software as a service" and "application service provider" and "cloud computing" with centralized computing (computer terminals, workstations, etc.). --72.39.35.178 (talk) 02:17, 13 August 2008 (UTC)

Disagree. A single server as discussed in centralized computing is certainly one deployment architecture for SaaS, but not the only one, just the one least likely to scale up to get a volume where it looks profitable. SaaS is a business model, not an architecture. SteveLoughran (talk) 21:24, 7 September 2008 (UTC)

what is the difference between SAS and SASS.

what is the difference between SAS and SASS. Are they the same thing? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 216.175.89.228 (talk) 00:39, 15 August 2008 (UTC)

sub section = Political Adoption

I reproduce the para here

The 2008 Presidential campaign season marks the first time that candidates have employed on-demand services or software-as-a-service to secure millions of dollars and build grassroots support. SaaS Technology is used for fundraising, connecting with constituents, and to create awareness. For instance, Barack Obama used the Internet to successfully mobilize masses of young voters to participate in the U.S. primary elections.[10]

this seems to hav nothing to do with SaaS . Suggest deletion

Sanjiv swarup (talk) 09:50, 10 September 2008 (UTC)

I agree with Sanjiv that it ought to be deleted. Carl.bunderson (talk) 19:12, 10 September 2008 (UTC)

Done. Carl.bunderson (talk) 04:07, 13 September 2008 (UTC)

Questions

Is SaaS a new technologies of Internet Hosting Paradigm

by Paradigm I refers the possibilities that it may belong to one of the following on the right template

--142.22.48.251 (talk) 04:16, 27 January 2009 (UTC)

Testing of SaaS

I started trying to clean up the badly-written testing section, and noticed that, despite the assertion at the beginning of the list about SaaS presenting "unique challenges" in testing, there's nothing on the list that isn't vital to testing ANY network application/web application/other multi-user application. I am therefore deleting this section; if there's some reason SaaS testing IS unique, someone should write about it, but I'm not finding anything.evildeathmath 16:56, 4 February 2009 (UTC)

biggest issue I've found as a consumer of services (like EC2) is that you run up a bill every time you run your tests. Also, few service providers offer a mock service API that is designed to fail in interesting ways, so I can't check what happens if I, say, ask for too many EC2 nodes than amazon has to hand, or see what happens if the nodes get promised but all of them fail to come up. We need mock services alongside the live ones. SteveLoughran (talk) 17:10, 4 February 2009 (UTC)

Link to DreamSimplicity's Buyer's Guide

I would like to submit the following link http://www.dreamsimplicity.com/saas-blog/tags/SaaS-Buyers-Guide/ to be included under the external links section, but there seems to be some question as to the intent of the submission. Please allow me to clarify... Although, DreamSimplicity is a commercial venture, it is not the intent of DreamSimplicity to promote itself through Wikipedia. I believe that the "Buyers Guide" will be a valuable addition to the article and provides a different perspective and new information than what is currently included in the article. Therefore, I would like to resubmit the link for inclusion. Dlee8888 (talk) 18:16, 12 May 2009 (UTC)

We don't commerical links such as this one to Wikipedia. See WP:EL for more information and please refrain from adding it again. Thanks. - MrOllie (talk) 18:38, 12 May 2009 (UTC)

Internationalisation "Fall of YYYY"

I guess this is a simple oversight but tor anyone outside of North America "Fall of 1998" has little meaning. I.e. "Autumn" is at the beginning of the year where I am from.

See the 'History' section

203.171.42.7 (talk) 04:45, 28 October 2009 (UTC)

History

The article leads the reader to believe that SaaS is quite a recent concept. It is simply wrong. It is only a recent term. The airline industry has enjoyed these kinds of architectures since 30-40 years at least, under the name of "multi host architectures", up to the level 4 described in the text, which means including multitenancy. Vincent Lextrait (talk) 08:23, 16 December 2009 (UTC)

Philosophy

Not everyone knows what Unix is so a link was added to it.Greenopedia (talk) 20:16, 29 January 2010 (UTC)