KEY SAAS BENEFITS

Cloud computing has the potential to lower IT costs by eliminating the upfront costs of hardware and software.

It is the public cloud provider that invests in the infrastructure required to deliver the cloud services and also reduces ongoing operational costs in areas including development, deployment, integration, maintenance, and upgrades.

WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW...

GET SPEED. SaaS enables businesses to get up and running in a flash. A financial services firm migrated its employee portal to a cloud-based vendor and launched it in two months, while another firm has spent the last 18 months building its employee portal in-house. In short, the cloud is ready-made. Customers don't build; they subscribe and receive services—including anything from Web conferencing and hosted e-mail to enterprise applications such as CRM and HRM—immediately.

FOCUS ON YOUR CORE COMPETENCY: Businesses have the opportunity to ship IT tasks to cloud computing specialists, who "worry about the nuts and bolts so that you don't have to." This enables the IT staff to focus on more important business processes.

KEEP THE CASH: CFOs are usually attracted to the "pay as you need" plans of cloud computing because it keeps cash in the bank longer. Instead of buying hardware, software and consultants to set up and run applications, businesses can pay a cloud-based provider by the user by the month.

Moreover, businesses pay for only what they use and can terminate the contract; classic on-premises solutions require businesses to pay with no certainty about the return on investment.

That means more risk, which CFOs hate.

INTERESTING FACTS...

The financial benefit of paying by the month rather than upfront is great when times are good, but especially important during a downturn.

The terminology "cloud" has been used for decades to symbolize a WAN that connected clients to server-based data centers. Simply put cloud computing is another version of network computing. But this cloud is not just any WAN; it is a synonym for the Internet. Nothing new here as the Internet has been around for over two decades.

Evolutionary, but not revolutionary. As early as 1970, IBM championed a concept called "time sharing." Users shared common IT resources and applications on a mainframe computer simultaneously with other users for variable fees that were dependent upon usage and consumed resources. Minimal CAPEX, low barrier to entry, shared IT infrastructure as well as shared costs, outsourced OPEX, low management overhead and immediate access to a broad range of business and IT applications are all benefits of time sharing. Almost 40 years later, we are back full circle to cloud computing.

TECHNOLOGY

• WHAT IS SAAS?
• KEY SAAS BENEFITS
• COMPARE SYSTEMS
• UPTIME PERFORMANCE
• WHITE PAPERS
• JARGON BUSTER