Trends
SaaS a value in hard times
As sourcing professionals
make purchasing decisions in times of
economic slowdown, Forrester Research says
software as a service (SaaS) can benefit
organizations by offering a deployment model
that lowers near-term expenditures, allows
buyers to prove the value of a solution
before committing to it, and shifts
significant aspects of the investment risk
from the organization to the SaaS provider.
"Many firms see the value
of SaaS regardless of the economic climate,"
says Forrester’s Liz Herbert. "However, when
software buyers are faced with fears of
potential recession, SaaS offers even
greater value, because it provides a more
flexible way of investing in software." She
cites the following benefits:
Reduce costs upfront and
have more predictable costs over time. SaaS
enables firms to significantly reduce
upfront costs and even eliminate some costs,
such as one-time software license purchases.
Additionally, SaaS shifts software
expenditures from a capex to an opex model,
which can be beneficial from a
cost-recognition standpoint–and therefore a
tax standpoint–in the short run. SaaS is
also typically easier to scale up or down to
meet needs over time. Finally, since
upgrades are seamless and automatic, firms
do not need to worry about a spike in costs
when they are forced to upgrade.
Prove value before
committing and continue to demand value from
the provider. Most SaaS solutions offer easy
access to pilot services or a free trial
solution before a buyer decides whether or
not there is value in purchasing the
service. Furthermore, SaaS makes rolling out
software incrementally easier, meaning firms
can prove the return on investment of their
purchase in one department or division
before rolling it out to other divisions or
the whole enterprise. SaaS users also have
more power to demand ongoing value from the
provider than in an on-premise purchase.
Offload risk to the SaaS
provider. Not only do SaaS buyers avoid an
upfront software license fee, but they also
avoid the upfront cost of investing in
infrastructure and associated testing and
employee resource costs since the SaaS
provider assumes those costs. While the SaaS
model does offload some risk to the
provider, this also means that firms are
giving up a degree of control over their
infrastructure and software, and SaaS could
introduce new risks if the SaaS provider
does not have the proper measures in place
in areas like security, backup, recovery and
performance.
Herbert says firms should
be cautious of:
Long-term cost of
ownership. Ongoing subscription can mean
that SaaS becomes more expensive than
on-premise in the long run.
Hidden costs. Some SaaS
providers charge additional fees beyond the
standard subscription fee (for example,
charges when firms exceed data storage
limitations). Additionally, there may be
other costs that firms forget to factor in,
such as the high cost of bandwidth in some
overseas markets.
Too many niche SaaS
applications. Many SaaS applications only
cover a small footprint of functionality,
meaning that firms attracted to the SaaS
model can find themselves with multiple SaaS
applications deployed across the
organization. This can create integration
headaches and make support of end-to-end
business processes difficult.
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Customers waiting on 802.11n
Forty percent of
respondents participating in a recent poll
conducted by Colubris Networks indicated
they will wait until the 802.11 ‘n’ standard
is ratified for wireless LANs before
upgrading their networks. Meanwhile, costs
to upgrade to the faster speed of 802.11n
were cited by more than one-half of
respondents as their most significant
concern when considering a move to 802.11n.
The survey responses
indicate there are still some misconceptions
regarding the 802.11n standard. IT leaders
need to understand that just deploying an
802.11n network does not necessarily mean it
will run at ‘n’ speeds, Colubris Networks
cautions, especially when legacy devices
(a/b/g) are deployed.
Many companies, according
to the survey, are under the impression that
802.11n will not affect the controller or
switch, when in reality most controllers
today will not be able to handle the
accelerated data rates promised with the new
standard, resulting in network bottlenecks
and the need to eventually upgrade or
replace the equipment. The key is to make
sure the right WLAN architecture is in place
to provide an easy migration to 802.11n.
Originally anticipated in
early 2008, the ratification of the ‘n’
standard is still more than a year away,
although 35 percent of respondents said they
had plans to implement 802.11n within the
next 12 months. The rest, however, indicated
they would either wait until the standard
was ratified or simply have no plans to
implement.
Respondents who indicated
they will wait or have no plans to implement
802.11n have a variety of reasons. For some
(41 percent) it is a budget issue, but for
others (28 percent) there is still concern
about interoperability with existing 802.11
gear.
Companies becoming more sociable
According to Awareness
Networks, a social media solution provider,
employers are starting to allow social media
participation more freely in their
organizations. The company contends, based
on a recent survey it conducted, that the
walls are coming down on social network use
for business purposes. The number of
organizations that allow social networking
for business purposes has increased, it
says, to 69 percent in 2008–up from 37
percent in last year’s survey.
Survey respondents said
their organizations use social media to
build and promote their brand (63 percent),
improve communication and collaboration (61
percent) and increase consumer engagement
(58 percent). Almost half of respondents
indicate they are using video, social
networking, blogs and online communities
successfully.
Some employers are using
internal-facing social media communities for
employees, rather than using Facebook,
MySpace or LinkedIn. One third of
respondents indicate their organization
plans to deploy an internal-facing
community, and the main goal is to increase
knowledge sharing and employee
collaboration.
Other employers use
external-facing communities or a blend of
internal and external communities. Slightly
less than a third of respondents said their
companies were planning to deploy
external-facing communities, while 13
percent of respondents said they already
have them.
Employers are thinking
more about how to integrate Web 2.0
technologies and are taking steps to
encourage participation, according to the
survey. As Web 2.0 acceptance grows,
employers are thinking more about best
practices to encourage participation.
Short takes
Social security
Cybercriminals
increasingly are moving away from trying to
break into computers directly, choosing
instead to target Internet users where they
spend much of their time online–at social
networking Web sites, new data suggests. In
an analysis of cybercrime activity in the
second half of 2007, security vendor
Symantec found
that two social networking sites together
were the target of 91 percent of U.S.-based
phishing Web sites.
Hijacked social
networking pages often are used to host
malicious software or malware directly or to
host links to phishing or malware sites that
are then advertised in messages sent to all
of the contacts in a victim’s social
network.
Why would hackers want to
steal user names and passwords for
MySpace or
Facebook accounts?
Spreading malware via hijacked
social-networking accounts is ideal,
Symantec says, because people are far more
likely to click on a link recommended by
their "friends" than they are a link that
arrives in a message from a stranger.
The shift from hacking
the computer to hacking the user can be
seen, as well, in pure malware-based
attacks. Symantec found that only 10 percent
of all malware samples detected in the
second half of 2007 sought to infect
computers by exploiting security
vulnerabilities. That means that 90 percent
of all malware installed on PCs in the last
six months of 2007 got there by simply
tricking people into installing it
themselves.