saas chapter 5 of the second reference book. saas is directly consumable by the end-user. more...

SaaS

Chapter 5 of the second reference book

• SaaS is directly consumable by the end-user. • More specifically, SaaS provides the full stack

of cloud services, and ideally presents these to end-user in a fashion that is not radically different from how users expect to use their applications.

Customer Relationship Management

• One of the most popular and most publized areas of SaaS is CRM. It includes functions such as account management, opportunity tracking, and marketing campaign administration.

• A well known example in this category is Salesforce.com

• Salesforce.com provides the following modules as services: Sales, Service & Support, Partner Relationship Management, Marketing, Content, Ideas and Analytics.

• It can be accessed from almost any browers and multiple mobile platforms such as iPhone, Android, Windows Mobile, and Blackberry

• Users can customize the application to some degrees

- add user-defined customized fields, - add customized tabs for specific vertical or

function-level features. • Salesforece.com offers a Web Service API for

data manipulation (Select, Insert, Update, and Delete).

• NetSuite is another popular CRM package• It provides the following software modules as

services - Pipleline and opportunity management - Order management - Advanced forecasting - Incentive management - Upsell manager - Account management

• NetSuite has also launched a global business management system called OneWorld, which offers on-demand international support to mid-market companies, or multi-national organizations.

• NetSuite also has an online marketplace for third party developers to sell their NetSuite extensions.

• SugarCRM - SugarCRM itself is not an on-demand service.

Rather it is an open-source software solution based on a “LAMP” stack.

- It is very easy and cheap to build SaaS solution on top of an IaaS by downloading SugarCRM and installing it on a virtual machine.

Human Resources

• HR administrates processes to support personnel functions such as recruiting, developing, retaining and motivvating employees.

• Workday provides the following functions as services:

- Absence, Compensation, Benefits, Staffing, Development, Performance management.

• Taleo Another well-known SaaS provider in the HR

space. It provides the following functions as services

- Recuritment, Performance Management, Employee Lifecycle, career management, and succession planning

Financial

• Workday: Payroll, spend management, financial accounting, customer accounts, supplier accounts, and cash management, procurement.

• Netsuite: Financial management, financial planning, inventory and supply chain, order management, services resource planning, human capital management, business intelligence and analytics.

• Intuit (The company who develops TurboTax, Quicken) provides online service include accounting, payroll and payment solutions.

Collaboration

• Google provides Gmail, Google Calendar, Google Talk, Google Doc, and Google Sites.

• Microsoft Online Services: Windows Live (Email, Mesh, Messenger, Movie Maker, Photo Gallery, Writer, SkyDrive), Office Web Apps, Office 365 (Exchange Online, SharePoint Online, Lync Online)

• Cisco Webex: combines real-time collaboration with phone conferenceing.

Backup and Recovery

• Cloud-based backup has an intrinsic benefit over on-site alternatives that the physical stroage is generally very far from the users and their source data. As such, it is resilient to many of the risks of natural disasters and other localized outrages.

• This type of service can also fall into Storage as a Service, but from the end-user interaction perspective, it is a typicall SaaS.

• Mozy - backup can be scheduled - it automatically detects the change of the folders

and files and backup the most recent version - all files are encrypted. - It can backup buisness applications such as SQL and

Exchanges - Data can be restored through the web, as a Mozy

virtual drive on Windows, or via ordering a DVD restore.

• Zmanda - Is not a service running on cloud. - It can backup data to disk, tape, and Amazon

S3. The user can specify hosts, paths, and backup destination at a central console.

Industry Specific SaaS

• Healthcare• Transportation• Logistics

Case Study

• Microstrategy Cloud

Copy from http://www.microstrategy.com/microstrategyworld/download/pdf/MSTRWorld2012_T2Cloud_S4_Introducing-Cloud-Professional-The-Future-of-SaaS-based-BI.pdf

• MicroStrategy Cloud Enterprise: PaaS An integration of - Infrastructure - BI software stack (data warehouse, ETL, BI) - Security for developing and deploying large-scale BI,

social, mobile intelligence applications.

• MicroStrategy Cloud Enterprise is architected for processing large volumes of data in a highly concurrent manner.

• The platform software stack partners including: informatica, ParAccel, and Teradata

• MicroStrategy Personal offers BI software as a service that allws users to upload, visualize, and share data through cloud.