The SaaS Service Stack - you can’t ignore it
Phil Wainwright has written a useful summary of the stack of services needed to successfully deliver Software as a Service (in a nutshell, business and other applications delivered to the end user without the need for any in-house IT infrastructure apart from your personal internet access device). From my discussions with some of those developing or planning to develop SaaS application offerings, I fear that too many focus just on the high level application functionality, naively ignoring what it takes to run a big system.
Being in the SaaS game demands industrial-strength underpinnings. We’re starting to see a range of service solutions for each level of those underpinnings (Apprenda et al), which enable the start-up to easily focus on application functionality and user experience. However, you still need to make some fundamental decisions on which underpinning solutions you intend to adopt from Day One . Trying to add them in later may prove impossible without a very costly rebuild and major service disruption - also expensive. Ignoring them (even if only while you get started) could see your great new SaaS idea brought down by unreliability, insecurity and slowness.
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March 4th, 2008 at 9:56 pm
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