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The Clouds are Turning GreenThere are numerous benefits inherent with SaaS applications and we have discussed many of them on this blog: anywhere access, low startup costs, automatic upgrades, etc. We’ve always known that the SaaS apps are more environmentally friendly than on-premise software, but have not taken the time to quantify and prove this. In September, Chris Thorman of Softwareadvice.com released a study regarding the environmental impact of SaaS applications in his blog post titled, “SaaS v. On-premise Software: Which One is More Green.” The post garnered a lot of buzz and sparked a healthy debate on the topic. Chris used the example of a four person health care company and measured how much energy they would use using on-premise software compared to what their energy consumption would be using SaaS. When using on-premise software, each user would use 2,352 KW of power per year while the SaaS users only used 152.85 KW of power per year.
Because SaaS providers leverage economies of scale, they are able to get more production per KW of power. If you want to learn more about the green benefits of cloud computing, see this video from FICO Tech Talk on greening the grid through cloud computing:
A look at the history of SaaSIn the late 90′s when NetDocuments was founded, we were one of the worlds first SaaS companies and have since witnessed first hand the evolution of the SaaS market. Recently, Service-Now.com released a white paper titled, “A Brief History of SaaS,” and I found it very accurate and informative. The white paper begins by discussing where traditional boxed software comes up short and how this created the need for SaaS:
In this testimonial from new NetDocuments customer Ward and Smith P.A., their CIO Chris Romano expresses this same sentiment when his law firm was faced with the task of an expensive software upgrade.
The next step in understanding the history of SaaS is understanding the difference between ASPs (Application Service Providers) and true SaaS offerings. In the late nineties during the tech bubble, ASPs were becoming very popular but ultimately, the ASP model failed:
With the decline of ASPs, a new way to deliver software emerged and that was SaaS. Over the last 10 years, we have seen the market for SaaS products grow at an ever increasing rate, and we only expect the growth of SaaS to continue. With this growth, many legacy software companies are trying to mold their existing products into SaaS offerings. This issue is accurately addressed in “A Brief History of SaaS:”
Although the history of SaaS is relatively short, it has made a significant impact on computing over the past decade and we believe that it has a very important role in continuing to define how computing is done now, and over the next decade as well.
Cloud Computing: The wave of the future? Is cloud computing solely the wave of the future? Recently, Google announced the future release of Google Chrome OS and this has caused quite a stir on Twitter and in the technology blog scene. Everyone is talking about how cloud computing and SaaS applications are the waves of the future and how they will change the computer industry. Although I beleive this to be true, I still find one glaring weakness in this argument; Cloud computing and SaaS are not only the waves of the future, but are the waves of the here and now. While some companies have been doing SaaS for a long time, many large corporations (e.g. Microsoft, Unisys, IBM) have just recently been releasing SaaS products at an ever faster rate. So much so that Brian Sommer of ZDNet recently announced on his blog that, “SaaS is now mainstream.” This shows that the market is ready to embrace SaaS, not a few years into the future, but right now. The guys from the hosted solutions blog got it right when they said, “[Cloud] technology isn’t the future, it’s today.” As the talking heads continue to debate the future of cloud computing and SaaS, us already in the SaaSosphere, will enjoy the benefits it can provide today, and determine the role it will play in the future. |
