Head out on that open road

Jim Shaw finds there is freedom for resellers in opening up SaaS apps and delivery

One of cloud’s best-kept secrets has been a lack of portability for the applications delivered using the software-as-a-service (SaaS) model. Many resellers have helped customer companies sign up for SaaS applications, backing up the move with the belief that it will be easy for them to migrate to another service provider if they need to.

But that goes against the plans of the SaaS vendors, who will be looking for long-term agreements to lock in customers by providing no exit strategy.

Many resellers are recognising open SaaS, where software is delivered as a service but with open-source principles at its core, as a viable alternative. The advantage is that when organisations want to leave, they export a copy of their application - code, database, and design - and move it wherever they choose, whenever they choose.

Open SaaS allows buyers to obtain business value from the software delivered as a cloud service, while retaining the control they would get from running software themselves. Of course, this is without investing in the hardware, resources and overhead that comes with managing a datacentre.

Poor portability

A lack of portability has existed in software for as long as there have been incompatible file formats. However, this situation has become even worse over the past few years with the proliferation of SaaS applications, which have introduced a complication for portability.

In the old-style, self-hosted software model, organisations could continue using old software for as long as it ran. For SaaS applications, however, software is lost as soon as the host’s monthly fee payment ceases.

Typically, SaaS applications fulfil business needs that are not easily met in other ways, such as accounting, social collaboration and customer relationship management. Often they are content management systems or web content management systems. In some cases the software is not available or easy to run as a self-hosted package, making the cost and complexity of system administration prohibitive.

Sometimes companies may turn to SaaS because they do not want to perform all the updates and maintenance themselves, or need to synchronise data among multiple servers.

SaaS applications have high availability rates, are easy to adopt widely throughout an organisation, and are available from almost any computer or device at any time. In addition, they generally have a lower total cost of ownership.

The problem arises with the proliferation of proprietary SaaS applications. Because the software is owned by someone else, you usually cannot make a copy of it, which you will probably have to do to run it on your own servers. If you cannot run the software, you are unable to get off the host and you - and your customer - are trapped.

Furthermore, SaaS solutions are often limited in the amount of customisation that can be done. This is especially true in a multi-tenant architecture, where customisations are not well segregated among tenants.

But users need to consider what will happen when their businesses grow, and directions change. Opening up SaaS means an organisation can still get the advantage of having SaaS applications in the cloud, while also future-proofing their solution.

Accelerated feature delivery

A SaaS model enables accelerated feature delivery, as all users have access to new features the moment they are pushed to the server. But no matter how many features a solution has, none can provide for all needs.

There may come a time when an organisation may need to, in essence, part ways from its provider to achieve its new goals. There is little more powerful than knowing that when you choose your SaaS offering for your customer, you have options if your customer’s - or, for that matter your - requirements change.

And this provides a road map for scale and for change. Also, it is a way to future-proof your offering, something which proprietary SaaS vendors cannot always accommodate.

This can help you and your clients meet ongoing business strategies in a cloudier world.

Jim Shaw is general manager for Europe at Acquia