Are You SaaS-tisfied?

Editor's note: WRAL Local Tech Wire has added another feature with the launch of the "Innovation Exchange." Noah Garrett, former executive director of communications for the North Carolina Technology Association, is a creative spirit, from writing music to news stories, who recently launched his own communications firm. The focus of the Innovation Exchange is just that – creating a Web community through which people can exchange ideas and foster creativity.

Participate in the Exchange. Send ideas and feedback to: noah@thinkngc.com

CHARLOTTE, N.C. – The hottest acronym on the Web right now is SaaS (Software-as-a-Service). As computing becomes a commodity and the Internet becomes faster and more reliable, the evolution of Web-native applications seems only natural to end-users expecting more from their online experience.

Industry insiders estimate 10 million companies will be using SaaS worldwide in the next five to 10 years. It is unique and a rather appealing business/delivery model because customers do not pay for owning the software but rather for using it. Think of it as transforming Information Technology into Information Management. Nothing is shipped or installed and applications run remotely and are web-based. And, it's particularly good for supporting mobile and geographically disbursed populations, whether they are sales staffers, telecommuters, customers or business partners worldwide.

Cue the proverbial pterodactyl to swoop up all that "shrink-wrapped" software now.

Josh Wolff is General Manager at Hosted Solutions in Charlotte and creator of the Carolina SaaS User Group. He sees Platform Integration or Platform as a Service (PaaS) as a dominant force in this space in the near future. "With the volume of desperate applications it is pertinent that they have a foundation to speak with each other. Industry leaders like NetSuite will continue to make significant investments in order to find ways to make application integration faster, cheaper and better. "

Another trend that will continue to evolve this year is the interconnection between SaaS and Web 2.0 often referred to as Enterprise 2.0. How will Wikis, social networking, blogs, etc., interact among SaaS users and providers?

I have been privileged throughout my career to work with some of the most creative people doing some of the most amazing things. Recently, my firm signed on to work in the SaaS space with Charlotte-based startup, Application Informatics. The company may have one answer to the interconnection questions.

AI offers an appliance-based solution delivered via its Open Source real user monitoring engine and provides SaaS companies the ability to monitor the end-user experience in real time while custom service layer hooks decode the performance and uptime within an application. This innovative technology provides support and development teams insight into potential problems and performance bottlenecks.

Adnan Choudary, president and founder of Application Informatics, noted that in a service-based, solutions-delivery architecture, a SaaS vendor has to have complete insight and a real time hook into those service layers. He explains, "The industry must be willing to adopt a new genre of tools made not for providers to manage data centers but tools custom made for SaaS vendors; which are application centric and put the information, control and the metrics of the user experience directly into the hands of the vendor."

Another challenge lies with companies perceiving a loss of control in their IT infrastructure when in actuality companies gain greater control due to the availability of API's (Application Programming Interface) and standards-based, data-exchange interfaces that allows information to interact with other SaaS and stone age (enterprise) software solutions. Choudary adds, "With this control also comes the responsibility for end to end delivery of the services. The performance of the applications, their availability and security are no longer a customers' heartache but the SaaS providers' responsibility."

Overall, companies are looking for business solutions that are easy to use, easy to deploy and are cost conscious to assist them in improving their bottom line. The comparatively low cost of entry to implement SaaS verses traditional software will be the major selling point since companies will no longer have to make multi-million dollar investments in software before they even know if an application is going to work for them. With the lower cost, small to midsize businesses also will have the ability to benefit from applications that may not have been available before due to cost, support, etc.

That levels the playing field as business continues to go virtual, and we ride the SaaS Tsunami.