Software as a service and cloud computing have come together to create
a confusing range of vendor offerings that are being billed as the next
greatest thing. But as the area evolves it is bringing new
opportunities for resellers as well as significant caveats. All of the
major vendors are now in some way involved, so it is important to
monitor developments closely.
Telecom’s integration arm Gen-i has been involved in cloud computing
for years. “Our capabilities span all three types of cloud services,”
says head of infrastructure and business applications, Leanne Buer.
“These are Infrastructure (IaaS), Platform (PaaS) and Applications
(SaaS). We also offer communications-based solutions (CaaS) as hosted
services.
"We are able to handle everything from the most simple cloud computing
requirements through to clients with extremely complex needs. We are
currently working on opportunities in the IaaS and CaaS space, which we
can then build on as clients become more comfortable with IT being
delivered over the cloud.”
Gen-i is seeing a growing trend towards cloud computing and significant
growth in the range of services being offered over the cloud. The
technology and the economic landscape have now reached a point where
these types of offerings deliver both a cost benefit and an
organisational benefit in scalability, speed of deployment and
flexibility.
“We have been working in this space for many years and have a solid
base of clients that currently use our hosted security (Safecom) as
well as productivity SaaS offerings (Managed Mail),” says Buer. “Gen-i
will also soon be launching a range of new infrastructure-based
services offered through our cloud. We expect the overall uptake in
computing, desktop and applications from the cloud to increase pretty
sharply over the next 18 months as more clients see the benefits hosted
solutions offer.”
Buer notes that it is important to realise that IaaS, SaaS and PaaS
solutions may not always be the most effective solution for every
business. “Each business should assess SaaS against their current and
long-term requirements, which is something we do with all our clients,”
she says.
Microsoft’s Online Services offers business email, calendar and tasks,
internal websites, voice and video conference calls and indication of
people’s availability. “Within the next 12 months Microsoft will have
Office Web Applications available as well,” says national technology
officer Brett Roberts. “The Microsoft solution will stretch across the
desktop, browser and phone. Using the cloud services model is an
attractive option for SMBs, as it has the potential to lower IT costs
and it will ensure IT costs are more transparent. This purchasing model
is certainly right for the current economic climate.”
Locally, Microsoft has been seeing those who already use its Office,
Exchange and Sharepoint products getting interested in, and making
enquiries about, the SaaS offerings.
“To address data security and service availability, we develop clear
service level agreements with partners and customers,” says Roberts.
“Our cloud solution also has a ‘reverse gear’ where data can be
retrieved and stored alternatively should customers choose to do things
differently.”
In addition to its SaaS offering, Microsoft provides the Windows Azure
Platform. This is an internet-scale cloud services platform hosted in
Microsoft datacentres, which provides an operating system and a set of
developer services that can be used individually or together. The Azure
platform can be used to build new applications to run from the cloud or
enhance existing applications with cloud-based capabilities.
Microsoft’s business model is to work with local partners. “The
majority of our revenue comes through the partner or reseller channel,”
says Roberts. “In New Zealand we have 3500 partners, and are working
closely with them to understand, position and sell Microsoft Online
Services and cloud computing solutions.
NetSuite provides a SaaS business management solution, encapsulating
Financials/ERP, CRM and e-commerce. The current economy has accentuated
the significant trend towards cloud computing by SMEs, as well as
larger businesses, says international products VP, Craig Sullivan.
“Businesses have seen their IT budget grow, and increasingly consumed,
by maintenance and overhead, with little left over for innovation and
gaining competitive advantage. Cloud computing fits the bill because it
provides a zero capex solution coupled with easy, pay-as-you-go
subscription services that eliminate costly maintenance and IT spend.”
Security and service availability remain a key area for any service
provider to address. This is especially important when running a
business application that is running core ERP, CRM and Ecommerce
processes. NetSuite addresses each of these areas, and for service
availability, provides a 99.5 percent service level commitment.
“We’re seeing robust growth in APAC as a whole,” says Sullivan.
“According to Springboard Research, the market for SaaS-based ERP in
Asia Pacific (excluding Japan) is estimated to grow from US$35 million
in 2008 to US$193 million by 2012.”
There are substantial opportunities for the reseller channel, he says.
“With the current economy, resellers of on-premise software have been
particularly exposed to the unpredictability and risk of selling
on-premise software,” says Sullivan. “The benefits of SaaS for
resellers is that it delivers recurring revenues on customer
subscriptions, year-over-year.”
IBM is seeing immense interest in internal clouds and about the
SaaS/cloud market generally. “Growth within the past 12 months has been
cautious, partly due to a lack of major local players,” says emerging
technologies executive, Rob Varker.
“Google, Amazon and IBM have been offering cloud platforms, and there
has been some takeup of these international offerings, but there has
not been a large scale movement by major customers yet. Impediments to
growth have been partly real, and partly perception, focusing upon
discomfort with a new thing and concerns over security.”
Nevertheless, IBM’s view is that the market is likely to grow
exponentially during the next 12 month, driven by reduced TCO and a
favorable ROI. One issue is that companies frequently don’t review the
TCO of existing infrastructure, which can grow and become less economic
as the company expands.
Within the next four months, IBM will be introducing a virtual server
service offering, designed to provide a managed hosting service to the
SMB market. The service will scale and grow as required, and will
integrate with existing services.
“For resellers, it is important to understand what aspects of client
infrastructure are ready for cloud infrastructure,” says Varker. “The
key to cloud computing is to standardise, rationalise, simplify and
automate. For resellers, it is important to focus upon standardising
and rationalising first.”
Revera is a locally owned and operated data centre and computing
infrastructure provider. “We have feet in both SaaS and cloud computing
camps,” says business development manager, Robin Cockayne.
“In the SaaS area, we provide ghosted IT infrastructure, maintaining
our position as a pure-play infrastructure provider rather than
software reseller. For software resellers we package monthly wholesale
rated options, including software licenses, and additional service
layers—such as help desk, storage, and disaster recovery. For example,
we have spearheaded Microsoft’s local push into hosted CRM, adding
necessary automated provisioning to our VDC (Virtual Data Centre)
hosting platform to streamline channel delivery. Five years ago, SaaS
was spooky. Not any more. It’s now a popular conversation inside IT
departments and boardrooms.”
Revera also functions as a pure cloud infrastructure provider,
concentrating on local clouds. As businesses accept that utility
computing can provide the computing, network and storage resources that
they need, deployment of applications into these environments is
expected to accelerate.
“Point solutions, like payroll, CRM, and accounting, have spearheaded
the SaaS market. Now we can expect to see chunkier applications lift
off,” says Cockayne. “However, people should be aware that a not all
clouds are the same. The current cloud hype fixates on international
services over the internet. But a cloud is simply an easy way to
connect to the things you need. And not all of that is provided by
international internet. Domestic internet and private clouds are much
less risky and more flexible.”
Revera white labels capability for resellers. “One SaaS example is
locally owned CRM integrator Complete Solutions, which launched a CRM
SaaS offering called CRMNow, bringing to market on-demand Microsoft
Dynamics,” says Cockayne. “A feature of Microsoft Dynamics is
multi-tenanted architecture, enabling hosting partners to run a single
copy of the server application, but support multiple customers
simultaneously and securely, easing hosting chores.”
Citrix has had a considerable amount of international success in the
cloud computing market, selling solutions to some of the biggest
vendors in the industry, including Amazon. “The key to a successful
cloud venture is the delivery of content to the user,” says systems
engineering manager, Chris Lockery.
“For example, using technologies like application virtualisation to
deliver apps over any medium is a great enabler. Citrix covers SaaS and
cloud through solutions such as the XenServer hypervisor, XenApp
application delivery and XenDesktop desktop virtualisation tool. Also,
this month has seen the availability of Citrix’s NetScaler VPX solution
– a virtualised load balancing appliance which brings security and
flexibility to acceleration solutions in the datacentre. “
Citrix has seen a spike in interest about cloud computing and SaaS from
service providers - both in the enterprise and moving into the SME/SMB
market. The company has seen special interest from service providers
using Citrix products for application and desktop delivery and moving
the market toward a hosted infrastructure model.
“Cloud in New Zealand is an emerging field,” says Lockery. “It’s an
area that a lot of service providers are looking into and begining to
invest in. There’s a big opportunity for small and medium businesses in
New Zealand to benefit from the cost and management savings that IT as
a service and cloud computing can bring them.”
Datasouth has traditionally been a provider of network infrastructure
and software development services. In more recent times these services
have evolved to include the supply of software and services to the mid
market and SME business sectors.
“Datasouth’s focus in the cloud computing sector is to provide a
complete solution,” says general manager, Craig Gerken. “We are not
only hosting a client’s application or network infrastructure, but also
supporting this environment at both the server and desktop level - as
well as providing development and customisation of their line of
business applications, business intelligence solutions and their
collaboration and communication platforms.”
From Datasouth’s perspective, the interest in this area is from
organisations having a requirement to deploy new applications, but the
lacking capacity or capability to support this with existing on-premise
network infrastructure. “A key example that we have seen a number of
times is a client wanting to deploy Microsoft Office SharePoint Server,
but being restricted by their existing infrastructure platform - and
not having budget available to invest in the required platform
upgrades.”
Software and services is still very much in its infancy. “I think the
current hype will continue to grow over the next 12 months,” says
Gerken. “What will be interesting over this time will be the increase
in uptake by organisations moving to this deployment model. What is
certain is that resellers that only focus on providing on-premise
infrastructure platform support will find their business opportunities
will substantially reduce over the coming years.”
cannot correlate growth to investment in IT.
Total server count increased to 54,655, up from 52,269 servers and total customers increased to 80,944, up from 70,803 in Q2.
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