Post on 29-Nov-2014
description
An introduction to Software as a Service
(SaaS) and SaaS Hotel™
1st Easy Limited – “Your Internet Resource Partner”
www.1stEasy.com | sales@1stEasy.com | 0808 222 2221
SaaS deployment | Dedicated Servers | Colocation | Web hosting | Remote Backups | Email filtering
Stephen Bell, Managing Director, 1st Easy Limited
1ST EASY WHITE PAPER | JANUARY 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 software
houses are 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 software companies that have adopted or plan to adopt a SaaS
delivery strategy.
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The Datacentre Colocation Business Case
Contents
The trend towards Software as a Service (SaaS) 3
Key SaaS direction business drivers 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 Datacentre Colocation Business Case
The trend towards Software as a Service (SaaS)
Your software business has traditionally sold products “in a box”, as one-off
sales. The key problem arising from this model is that as competition increases,
pricing is driven down and sales counters revert to zero with each month. As a
result, companies such as yours face increasing challenges to both grow and
fund the continued development of applications.
With the emergence of the commercial Internet, leading software vendors are
adopting a “Software as a Service” (SaaS) deployment model where
applications are accessed online via a web browser, as opposed to via physical
formats such as boxed DVDs which are installed on the end-user’s desktop. The
SaaS model introduces the idea of subscription based services, where access is
rented and new features are instantly made available to users. For the vendor,
this results in recurring monthly incomes from software, cost-effective
worldwide deployment and a revenue platform for both growth and re-
investment into application development. Of equal importance in a
competitive market, customers benefit from instant fulfilment and a better
experience, including factors such as improved security, reliability and
anytime-anywhere access.
Key SaaS direction business drivers
� Need for growth of company income requires a revenue platform that is
stable and increasing year on year; monthly or annual SaaS subscription
incomes provide this foundation.
� Software development costs are increasing as application security and
compliancy requirements grow; SaaS centralises application security and
compliancy, reducing such costs to a minimum.
The trend towards SaaS
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The Datacentre Colocation Business Case
� Need for improving global distribution of applications, best done by
making applications Internet compatible. The Internet has become the
distribution agent for SaaS.
� Need for upgrade efficiencies, not available through the software in a
box distribution model, but easily possible through centralised SaaS
delivery.
� Need to better control license security and ensure end-users adopting
applications pay associated license fees. Again, SaaS ensures total
centralised control of license usage.
Key SaaS success factors
The success of a SaaS model extends beyond the application layer itself
(quality, value, functionality, security, performance etc.) and is equally reliant
on the underpinning Internet infrastructure (datacentres, networking, security,
and server platforms).
Such components can be graded in terms of reliability, performance and global
reach:
� Enterprise-class datacentres with 24/7/365 technical support and high
Service Level Agreements (SLAs) on power, networks and cooling.
� High availability, 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 (24/7/365
on-site guards, access control systems, fire suppression etc.) and digital
security at the network border/network application layers, to ensure
applications and customer data are well protected.
� Remote backup datacentres with cost effective private network
connections to allow the backup of vast quantities of data to a remote
location, with connection speeds to restore efficiently if required.
Key SaaS success factors
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The Datacentre Colocation Business Case
� Global inter-connected datacentres and relationships, in order to deploy
applications closest to the end-user (minimised latency), handle
currency and customs differences and deliver the best possible
experience to the end user of the applications themselves.
Key SaaS success factors
6
The Datacentre Colocation Business Case
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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The Datacentre Colocation Business Case
Layer 1 - Enterprise-class datacentres
With its roots in hosting and ecommerce application serving (the earliest
deployments of SaaS monthly revenue models) and expansion into colocation
services, the success of 1st Easy has been dependent on the selection of
datacentres appropriate to the task. 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
Vendor reputation and 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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The Datacentre Colocation Business Case
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.
SaaS Hotel architecture
Figure 2: Dual UK datacentre inter-connection and network configuration
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The Datacentre Colocation Business Case
Like the best, we peer directly with the best — the most important in the UK —
and they reciprocate. This gets IP network packets from A to B via the most
direct route, enhancing end-user application performance.
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 never 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.
SaaS Hotel architecture
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The Datacentre Colocation Business Case
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 Hotel architecture
SaaS benefits
These advances in network technology make the deployment of SaaS
far more reliable, secure, manageable and scalable to the global
market.
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The Datacentre Colocation Business Case
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.
SaaS Hotel architecture
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The Datacentre Colocation Business Case
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.
SaaS Hotel architecture
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The Datacentre Colocation Business Case
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 Hotel architecture
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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The Datacentre Colocation Business Case
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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The Datacentre Colocation Business Case
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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The Datacentre Colocation Business Case
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
sbell@1steasy.com
0800 222 2221
About the author