This has been a great thread to watch as it revives a debate that really got going in earnest when Salesforce.com started to make it big. Is SaaS a safe strategy for key business process software? The decision to use a SaaS platform is pretty heavily influenced by characteristics of the customers considering the platform as is clear here. Companies without sufficient infrastructure or personnel will likely chose to accept the risk of hosted software and data. Those that have servers already running in house can likely host cheaper than paying someone else to do so and have more control. Tons and tons of arguments on both sides of this one. All that being said, I think there are a couple of items mentioned here that are key:
1. Being comfortable with the health of the SaaS company is a key part of the decision. There are some very real risks to business continuity if the SaaS vendor goes out of business, or even struggles a little. Software in escrow is a great safeguard if you can get it. 2. Pull the data down locally and test it regularly. Makes sure you know what your processes are going to be in the event of the SaaS company folding up, or even struggling. This doesn’t really change that much from hosting internally, you still have to test backups, have processes document if a server up and died, etc., but it is more difficult with extracted data than standing up a new internally hosted server and restoring data for sure. 3. The data conversion and onramp effort is the same for internally hosted or SaaS in my mind. They are both a ton of work, and the biggest drawback to making a switch of any kind. Yes, you have more control over the internally hosted app and it’s required data, but it is still a monster task that keeps most from making a switch. However, I think there are a couple of items that seem to be pretty well settled: 1. SaaS platforms are here to stay. Salesforce.com and others pioneered this, and big and small companies alike have made the decision to go SaaS for some pretty key business processes. Whether or not it is right for a given company and their OSS/Billing platform is dependent upon that company. 2. Internally hosted applications are here to stay as well. There are always some things that make sense to have total control over or that need to be close enough to the hardware it monitors to be effective. 3. The SaaS market is growing. Smaller footprint client computers means more centrally hosted applications. Phones, Chromebooks, etc mean web based applications and SaaS based hosting works great for them. 4. It is cheaper to host multi-tenant applications than single tenant applications. Even single tenant apps are being aggregated onto VMs so that multiple servers can be run by single server hardware. True multi-tenant hosting like the big guys are doing (Salesforce.com, Microsoft Office 365, etc.) is a fraction of the cost of standing up that infrastructure in all the client organizations using those apps. I have seen the numbers at companies like Wells Fargo and Best Buy, it is a pretty staggering difference. 5. There is always a level of comfort accomplished IT guys have being able to get their hands on their servers to see what is going on or to ensure it is running the way it should. That comfort can’t be replaced by a SaaS company telling them that their stuff is being managed well. For us, we have grown up in the IT industry (started with DOS 3.x, dual floppy computers, hit the big time as a Novell CNE in 1992 😊) we have the experience and comfort building and running large infrastructure. However, we have made the decision to pay others to do so wherever we can. It is just too distracting at our size to have a server acting up when we are working on a tower or a customer and have to go deal with that. Even our Powercode instance is hosted by a VM hosting company. It does give us hands on control of our data, but we really don’t anything with that server other than test backups. If Powercode had a complete SaaS model, we’d be even happier. David Coudron From: Af [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Josh Reynolds Sent: Wednesday, October 18, 2017 6:55 AM To: [email protected] Subject: Re: [AFMUG] Sonar Please don't become a Sonar customer just to demonize them because you don't like their service model. Seriously. That'd be a super shitty thing to do. On Oct 18, 2017 6:52 AM, "Mike Hammett" <[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote: I will be using it shortly as Sonar bought WISPMon. All of the major billing\OSS platforms with modern features are also cloud-based, so there's not really anywhere else to go. That's fine for you that it works that way, but many WISPs are increasing their use of on-premises virtualization. What about your monitoring, DNS, RADIUS, syslog, Unimus, mail, etc., etc. servers? Yes, my reasons do outweigh arbitrary reasons to keep it in a cloud environment. Actually, I've been fairly quiet on this particular issue and will be increasing my advocacy efforts in this regard to all billing\OSS platforms. As I said, it's the SFP port of the billing\OSS world. ----- Mike Hammett Intelligent Computing Solutions<http://www.ics-il.com/> [http://www.ics-il.com/images/fbicon.png]<https://www.facebook.com/ICSIL>[http://www.ics-il.com/images/googleicon.png]<https://plus.google.com/+IntelligentComputingSolutionsDeKalb>[http://www.ics-il.com/images/linkedinicon.png]<https://www.linkedin.com/company/intelligent-computing-solutions>[http://www.ics-il.com/images/twittericon.png]<https://twitter.com/ICSIL> Midwest Internet Exchange<http://www.midwest-ix.com/> [http://www.ics-il.com/images/fbicon.png]<https://www.facebook.com/mdwestix>[http://www.ics-il.com/images/linkedinicon.png]<https://www.linkedin.com/company/midwest-internet-exchange>[http://www.ics-il.com/images/twittericon.png]<https://twitter.com/mdwestix> The Brothers WISP<http://www.thebrotherswisp.com/> [http://www.ics-il.com/images/fbicon.png]<https://www.facebook.com/thebrotherswisp>[http://www.ics-il.com/images/youtubeicon.png] <https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCXSdfxQv7SpoRQYNyLwntZg> ________________________________ From: "Darin Steffl" <[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>> To: [email protected]<mailto:[email protected]> Sent: Tuesday, October 17, 2017 10:08:47 PM Subject: Re: [AFMUG] Sonar I'm in agreement with Simon that it's much faster and reliable to host in the cloud than a server on site. It would cost me many more hours, hand holding, and worry if I had to host this server in my network. If I went on vacation and something happened, I'd be stressed. With sonar living in the cloud, there's less to worry about as it's hosted in a much more reliable datacenter than I could afford to build. It's also managed by sonar's team so if there's an issue, they take care of it. Stress free for me. I see why you might want to host it in house but those reasons do NOT outweigh all the benefits of letting sonar host it in the cloud for you and take care of the problems. Mike, if you don't like Simon's decision to leave it in the cloud, shut up and move on. There's no reason for you and Matt Hoppes to keep beating a dead horse and sound like a broken record. Use something else you're happy with and let the rest of us grow our business and make more $$ while you two complain about a product you don't even use. Jeez ha On Oct 17, 2017 8:31 PM, "Seth Mattinen" <[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote: On 10/17/17 6:14 PM, Mike Hammett wrote: Expect repeated harassment until a good reason is presented or you capitulate. It's the SFP of the billing\OSS world. I always welcome my competitors to have external dependencies. When they try to hand wave their problems away as vendor or cloud problems it helps me gain new customers. ~Seth
