SaaS: An Enterprise Perspective

We have published a new paper. This is the paper some of us have been waiting to see for some time. (It is certainly one that I have been toiling over the last few months). In this paper, we explained what SaaS means to an enterprise from both the business and technical perspectives.

From the business angle, we looked at:

· The 3 L’s of the SaaS continuum as I had previously blogged about.

· The financial, legal and political considerations that might sway the enterprise in adopting on-premise or in-the-cloud solutions.

· The transformational role of enterprise IT within a hybrid on-premise and SaaS environment.

On the technical side, we explained the architecture models for:

· Reconciling data and functional dependencies between on-premise and in-the-cloud system through integration architecture.

· Abstracting the “how” from the end user through composite applications, resulting in better user experience.

· Enforcing security and access control policies through identity federation technology.

For those still pondering the question of SOA vs SaaS, this is for you: As SOA is about developing agility in the enterprise, SaaS is about the option to exercise that agility. So go read the paper!