saas benefits

An introduction to Software as a Service

(SaaS) and SaaS Hotel™

Stephen Bell, Managing Director, 1st Easy Limited

1ST EASY WHITE PAPER | MARCH 2010

What is this document about?

This document introduces company IT Management, Directors and The Board to the

concept of Software as a Service (SaaS), explaining how and why companies are

increasingly adopting it as a business and supply strategy. It also introduces the SaaS

Hotel™ brand from 1st Easy — its architecture and how it can help support and

benefit commercial organisations that have adopted or plan to adopt a SaaS delivery

strategy.

1st Easy Limited – “Your Internet Resource Partner”

www.1stEasy.com | [email protected] | 0808 222 2221

SaaS deployment | Dedicated Servers | Colocation | Web hosting | Remote Backups | Email filtering

The Datacentre Colocation Business Case

Copyright © 1999-2010 1st Easy Ltd

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Contents

The trend towards Software as a Service (SaaS) 3

• Key drivers for adopting a SaaS strategy 3

• Key SaaS success factors 4

SaaS Hotel™ from 1st Easy Limited 6

• The SaaS Hotel architecture 6

• Layer 1 - Enterprise-class datacentres 7

• Layer 2 – Resilient commercial grade IP transit and security 8

• Layer 3 – Network layer, local and global application management and security 10

• Layer 4 – Enterprise SAN and servers 11

• Layer 5 – Virtualisation delivery platform 12

• Layer 6 - Common Solution Service Platform (CSSP) 13

Glossary 14

About the author 16

Contents



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The trend towards Software as a Service (SaaS)

Traditionally, software has been rolled out from IT departments by physical

transfer media such as CD-ROM, DVD or direct copy over networks. The

problem arising from this model lies with the time consuming, repetitive and

complex task of version management and the support of client side systems —

an increasingly pertinent issue as software becomes progressively more integral

to the business which it drives. As a result, companies often find difficulties in

overcoming this barrier to application improvement, resulting in creeping costs,

constrained productivity and ultimately, reduced profitability.

Leading businesses are now taking advantage of the “Software as a Service”

(SaaS) deployment model where applications are accessed online via a web

browser, as opposed to distribution via physical formats which are traditionally

installed on end-user desktop computers. Importantly, the SaaS model

introduces the idea of centralised version management where updates, bug fixes

and new features are instantly made available to users at the click of a button,

the benefits of which are immediately apparent:

� Time, costs and process: Busy IT departments benefit from simplified,

more efficient software distribution and updating, cost-effective worldwide

deployment and a reduced dependency on desktop system configurations.

Consider the familiar scenario of managing a typical computer suite: what

once potentially represented months of complex work in installations and

individual workstation reconfigurations can now be achieved in an easily

coordinated, timely manner. This advantage is multiplied with scale (i.e.

multiple office locations, global distribution if international sites are

involved).

� Productivity: End users (staff) within the business benefit from instant

access to the latest software version, resulting in a better experience,

improved security, reliability and anytime-anywhere access — all of which

contribute to improved productivity.

The trend towards SaaS



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Key drivers for adopting a SaaS strategy

� The need to reduce the complexities of managing end user software

applications.

� The need for upgrade cost, time and process efficiencies, not available

through the software-in-a-box distribution model, but easily possible

through centralised SaaS delivery.

� More stealth-like support of application security as compliance

requirements grow; SaaS centralises application security and reduces

associated costs to a minimum.

� The need to improve distribution of applications across multi(national)

sites, best done by making applications Internet compatible. The Internet

has become the distribution agent for SaaS.

� Where a software product is delivered as a saleable item (as opposed to

an internal business application), the SaaS model facilitates more

accurate license reporting and ensures that only authorised (via

subscription) end-users have access to the application.

Key SaaS success factors

Whilst the benefits of the SaaS model are clear, its wider success extends

beyond the software application itself (quality, value, functionality, security,

performance etc.) and is equally reliant on the underpinning Internet

infrastructure (datacentres, networking, security, and server platforms).

Such components — termed here as “Layers” — can be graded in terms of

reliability, performance and global reach:




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� Enterprise-class datacentres with 24/7/365 technical support and high

Service Level Agreements (SLAs) on power, networks and cooling.

� Fast and reliable bandwidth (IP transit) in the required volumes.

� High performance servers on which applications are powered.

� Comprehensive physical security measures at the datacentre level and

digital security at the network level, to ensure applications and

business/customer data are protected.

� Tightly coupled remote backup datacentres, with cost effective private

network connections, to allow efficient backup of vast quantities of end

user data in a secure manner.

� Global inter-connected datacentres and relationships, in order to deploy

software applications closest to the end-user and customers alike

(minimised latency), handle currency and customs differences and deliver

the best possible experience to users of the applications themselves.




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SaaS Hotel™ from 1st Easy Limited

“Your Apps. Any Place. Any Time.”

SaaS Hotel is an environment optimised for the deployment of software over the

Internet. Composed of six service layers, the SaaS Hotel infrastructure has been

designed to cover each aspect of successful SaaS delivery — from a reliable

foundation of datacentres and networking, through to a choice of global delivery

points to ensure the most responsive experience for end-users.

Figure 1: SaaS Hotel architecture

SaaS Hotel from 1st Easy



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Layer 1 - Enterprise-class datacentres

With its roots in hosting and ecommerce application serving (the earliest

deployments of the SaaS model) and expansion into colocation services, the

success of 1st Easy has been dependent on the selection of datacentres

appropriate to the task of hosting business-critical software. Qualifying criteria

include:

� Physical security: 24/7/365 on-site security, access control systems,

VESDA fire suppression

� Resilient connectivity: multiple connections with major hubs

� Power availability: dual UPS (Uninterruptable Power Supply) power

feeds and backup generators

� Environmental control: resilient air conditioning

By necessity, resilience is a factor taken very seriously by 1st Easy — a shortfall

in any of these attributes at one of our datacentres would cost our company

dearly for any outage event extending beyond just 30 minutes.

SaaS Hotel architecture

SaaS benefits

End-user application experience is underpinned by datacentre

reliability, whilst scalable off-site backup architectures are available to

protect their data.



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Layer 2 – Resilient commercial grade IP transit and security

Highly specified datacentres, expert technical support and state of the art server

architectures are important; the fact remains however, that the heaviest reliance

in SaaS application delivery is the network driving it all. That's why 1st Easy have

invested heavily in this area, including part-acquisition of a network company.

Like the best, we peer directly with the best — the most important in the UK and

worldwide — in return, they reciprocate. This gets IP network packets from A to B

via the most direct route, enhancing end-user application performance.


Figure 2: Dual UK datacentre inter-connection and network configuration



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This strategy has proven most effective at meeting demanding Service Level

Agreements (SLAs) and is capable of coping with the severest of Distributed

Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks.

Our dual fail-over firewall architecture has rarely lost the ability to deliver data

packets to and from servers and further enhances security, without

compromising the SLA levels.

SaaS benefits

Secure, high performance point-to-point delivery between your SaaS

platform and end-users ensures a smooth, crisp experience, improving

productivity and enhancing your credibility.


Figure 3: Graph showing 100% network availability over a one year period at our Manchester facility.



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Layer 3 – Network layer, local and global application

management and security

Using network technologies from trusted suppliers such as Juniper Networks, F5

Networks, HP and Cisco, we provide protected, high availability and load

balanced configurations, on both local and global scales.

We can add layers of additional control and security that perform the following

functions:

� Application Local Traffic Management (LTM), optimisation and load

balancing of your applications.

� Global Traffic Management (GTM) across multiple datacentre points of

presence, ensuring constant application services, global delivery and

automatic failover.

� Application Security Management (ASM) that significantly reduces the risk

of data loss or damage and protects intellectual software property.

� Hardware web application acceleration, capable of improving performance

by between two to ten times - reducing the need for costly hardware

upgrades and improving the end user experience.


SaaS benefits

These advances in network technology make the deployment of SaaS

far more reliable, secure, manageable and scalable on a global basis.



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Layer 4 – Enterprise SAN and servers

As a direct Enterprise level customer and reseller of Dell Corporation, 1st Easy

are able to source and deploy some of the most advanced and reliable server

architectures available in the market today. These servers form the backbone of

deployment of SaaS, delivering scalable performance, dual PSU reliability and

high end configurations to support your applications.

Our adoption of Dell PowerEdge® technology has introduced considerable

improvements in power efficiencies, reducing by a third our server related power

consumption. Quite aside from “riding the green bandwagon”, the benefits of

reduced power consumption are as much about moderating datacentre operating

costs as protecting the environment.

As part of the strategy of virtualisation delivery (see further in this white paper),

we have adopted the industry leading Storage Area Network (SAN) platform,

based on EMC Corporation's CLARiiON® CX4 product range. This SAN platform

delivers “five nines” (99.999%) availability, high throughput SAN storage to your

applications and servers, improving uptime and application database

performance.

Our dual datacentre architecture allows full disaster recover procedures to be

deployed, using EMC's MirrorView constant backup imaging at all data layers,

without impacting on server (and hence application) performance.

SaaS benefits

Using the latest Enterprise server and SAN storage technologies, we

can ensure SaaS operations run smoothly, cost effectively, and with

the minimum of impact on the environment.




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Layer 5 – Virtualisation delivery platform

The deployment of SaaS is delivered via Virtual Private Servers (VPS). The

reasons for deployment on this platform layer can be summarised as follows:

� VPS can be considered flexible physical hardware servers, which can be

instantly deployed, moved and resized - providing the flexibility to respond

to the fluid and ever changing characteristics of a SaaS environment.

� VPS are power efficient, utilising spare capacities of the hardware server

platform layer, hence reducing the cost of SaaS deployment and providing

a greener solution for the environment.

� Management of VPS is easier at large scales, allowing support services to

easily identify servers requiring extra resources.

We offer two tiers of virtualisation that are suited to different requirements and

budgets: VMware at enterprise-level (comprehensive functionality) and Open

Source Citrix Xen technologies at entry-level (reduced, core functionality).

SaaS benefits

Virtualisation improves application uptime, as resources are easily

redeployed at the press of a button. It introduces greater flexibility by

allowing VPS resizing on demand and helping you to grow without

expensive upgrades or downtime. The result is better application

platform deployment: cheaper, more reliable, and more scalable.




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Layer 6 – Common Solution Service Platform (CSSP)

Working closely with large USA-based datacentre provider CoSentry, we have

extended our SaaS Hotel platform to encompass deployment in the North

America. This reciprocal arrangement allows UK and European software vendors

to more effectively establish North American markets, whilst USA/Canadian

based vendors can expand into Europe. Forthcoming links with datacentres in

Australia and Asia will provide a truly global SaaS deployment platform for the

lowest latencies at end-user level.

A coordinated CSSP standard provides datacentre support teams and software

vendor clients with a unified platform that enables:

� 24/7/365 access and visibility to local support operations for clients and

technicians

� Rapid resolution of issues

� Pooling of technical resources and knowledge

� Deployment of best technical skills to fix complex issues

� A single and consistent support workflow and process of resolution


SaaS benefits

The CSSP provides improved business continuity of applications,

disaster recovery procedures and simplifies support call management on

a global basis. It also provides global visibility to control local disaster

situations, allowing the coordination of end-user application/data

redeployment on a temporary basis, should one locality be affected by a

serious outage or act of God.



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Glossary

Software as a Service (SaaS)

Software deployment model where applications are accessed by users online, as

opposed to locally via a program running on a desktop computer.

Commercial datacentre

Designed to host “mission critical” Internet applications, a purpose built

commercial facility is served by resilient networks, power and environmental

controls, and also offers high levels of physical and digital security.

(Low) latency

In the context of SaaS, latency is the perceived delay (or lag) experienced by

users of online services between issuing a command and seeing a response; low

latency (highly responsive performance) therefore, is desirable when delivering

an application online.

IP transit / bandwidth / traffic

A measure of the speed or volume of traffic that is supplied to a datacentre client.

Often referred to in Mbps (Megabits per second) or Gb (Gigabytes) per month.

Service Level Agreement (SLA)

Typically associated with a percentage figure for the guaranteed level of service

over one year (e.g. 100% power SLA indicates power availability without failure

during an annual period). Pre-agreed monetary compensation can often be

claimed if service falls short of the stated SLA.

Uninterruptable Power Supply (UPS)

The provision of emergency back-up battery power to ensuring ongoing power

supply to equipment in the event of a mains power failure.

Glossary



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Resilience / redundancy

The provision of fault tolerant services, generally in the area of networks and

power. For example, a resilient network will consist of at least two routes, so that

if one fails, the second (backup) network will continue to service Internet traffic.

Load balancing

Intelligent distribution of traffic amongst a server cluster to optimise application

performance and reliability.

Glossary



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About the author

This article was written by Stephen Bell, Managing Director of 1st Easy Limited,

as well as two other internet services companies in the North West of England.

Stephen has 30 years experience in business and IT services delivery and has

worked for leading companies such as Sun Microsystems, Silicon Graphics,

Sequent and IBM during his career.

As a Director and owner of companies for the last ten years, he has focused on

the delivery of advanced Internet based services to many companies, both large

and small.

Contact details

[email protected]

0800 222 2221

About the author

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