What SMBs need to know about SaaS...now

Software as a Service is one of—if not the most—popular cloud delivery models for small- and medium-sized businesses. According to Gartner—Hype Cycle for Cloud Computing (2011), SaaS is entering the mainstream market in the next two to five years.

The SaaS model levels the playing field between growing businesses and larger competitors, by equipping SMBs with application functionality that only large enterprises previously enjoyed. Moreover, this increase in functionality no longer requires huge investments in technology and resources. SMBs no longer have to worry about the costs and investment associated with building and maintaining an infrastructure to support modern business applications as the SaaS subscription and delivery model now makes these applications affordable to businesses of all sizes.

While SaaS adoption continues to grow amongst SMBs, it’s important to realize that nothing is ever as easy as it seems. There are thousands of SaaS applications on the market today. Which ones have the right features for your business? Which ones have the security and scalability you need? How do you get started and what support should you expect? How do you pull all these solutions together, with your existing applications and make sure they support your business?

These are important questions that growing companies typically have little time to consider, particularly with limited IT resources.Once you get beyond the basics of SaaS like cost, infrastructure, access, maintenance and support, here is the next level of items growing businesses should consider when choosing a SaaS solution:

Integration
As growing businesses increase their use of SaaS technology, the need for integrating the businesses’ applications is critical. With little appetite to rip and replace existing applications at once, SMBs must ensure that they connect new SaaS applications to legacy systems. When looking for a SaaS integration solution, SMBs should look for these main characteristics: 1. Simple to implement; 2. Out-of-the box connectors with cloud and legacy systems; 3. Ability to configure without customization

Analytics
Today’s organizations are overwhelmed with data that is siloed on a number of disparate business applications including sales, finance and human resources. SMBs struggle to access and analyze the data they need to get an overall view of business performance.

Today most businesses rely on spreadsheet-based reports that are cumbersome to build and maintain and are frequently out-of-date. They need an analytics tool that comes out of the box with 70 percent of the cross-application reporting capabilities they need yet is flexible enough to be configured and modified as the business changes.

Partners
While the comfort level with cloud computing is growing, many businesses are still wondering “Where do I begin?” When SMBs start to think about expanding their software portfolio from a sea with thousands of seemingly identical SaaS applications, it’s worthwhile to find a trusted partner to help along the way.

Thankfully, there is a new class of partners emerging who offer an end-to-end solution and who are capable of delivering multiple SaaS applications, plug and play integrations, cross application analytics and turnkey services. These partners have the experience and track record to help SMBs choose a solution and stand behind it. With limited IT staff, they don’t have time to sift through all the options and the value-proposition a partner can bring is significant for a small- or medium-sized business.

Now that the market is transitioning, there are new SaaS partner models emerging with companies offering end-to-end services including implementation, integration, business process consulting and support across multiple applications. If you are a growing company with limited IT resources, consider looking at a partner who offers a total solutions approach.

Telcos lost millions due to social messaging

New estimates from research firm Ovum indicate that consumers’ increasing use of IP-based social messaging services on their smartphones cost telecom operators $8.7 billion in lost SMS revenues in 2010, and $13.9 billions in 2011.

The analyst firm revealed that it expects the decline, representing nearly 6 percent of total messaging revenue in 2010 and 9 percent in 2011, to continue as the popularity of messaging apps continues to grow.

Ovum warned operators to rework their legacy services if they want to secure their future position in the messaging market.

“Social messaging has disrupted traditional services, and operators’ revenues in this area will come under increasing pressure,” said Neha Dharia, consumer analyst at Ovum and author of the report.

“Tapping into the creativity of app developers, forming industry-wide collaborations, and leveraging their usage data and strong relationships with subscribers are the key ways for operators to ensure that they hold their ground in the messaging market,” Dharia said.

However, despite the threat to messaging revenues, Ovum said it believes that the strong presence of social messaging should be looked upon as an opportunity. This threat will drive telcos to consider alternative sources of revenue, such as mobile broadband.

“And now the market has been tested, operators know what types of messaging services work,” commented Dharia. “In addition, operators are in a position of strength because they control the entire messaging structure through their access to the user‚Äôs phone number and usage data. The established billing relationship is a great advantage, as is the fact that operators control to a great extent the services to which the user is exposed.”

However, offering innovative messaging services and aligning revenue schemes with models in the social world will not be enough to win the battle against social messaging, Ovum said.

Industry-wide collaboration and co-operation will be the key to growth in the messaging realm, it added. “Operators must remain open to partnering with app developers, sharing end-user data with them and allowing integration with the user’s social connections. Working closely with handset vendors will also be important; they control some of the most popular social messaging apps, and can also provide preloaded applications.”

“The most important factor, however, will be co-operation between telcos. They are no longer competing merely among themselves, but must work together to face the challenge from the major Internet players,” concluded Dharia. NEWSBYTES.PH

Kingston Fastest USB Flash Drive

Top memory products manufacturer Kingston recently announced the Kingston DataTraveler HyperX 3.0, designed for enthusiasts and gamers, and features the fastest speeds and largest capacities that Kingston has to offer in a USB Flash drive.

Its high-speed eight-channel architecture provides USB 3.0 data transfer rates of up to 225MB/s read and 135MB/s write.

Users can save time associated with opening, editing and copying large files and applications between devices.

The fast write speeds also allow users to work on large files or applications directly from the USB 3.0 drive without performance lag.

The DataTraveler HyperX 3.0 is available in 64GB, 128GB and 256GB capacities.

The 256GB capacity can store approximately 10 Blu-ray Discs (25GB each), 54 DVDs (4.7GB each), 48,640 MP3s (4MB each) or 13,473,684 Microsoft Word files pages with various formatting and basic graphics.

With a durable and sleek design, the Kingston DataTraveler HyperX 3.0 is a terrific portable storage solution for gamers, enthusiasts, early adopters and high-end consumers who require the best performance and highest capacities to carry their digital library.

Faster speeds and higher capacities enable users to quickly store their digital files and keep it with them at all times, in HyperX style.

DataTraveler HyperX 3.0 features a metal and rubberized casing with a reinforced key ring hole for daily use.