SaaS Development Research Articles

SaaMES: SaaS-Based MSA/MTA Model for Real-Time Control of IoT Edge Devices in Digital Manufacturing

As a software delivery model, Software as a Service (SaaS) has attracted considerable attention from software providers and users. Most traditional companies are shifting their businesses to an SaaS model. SaaS development is a very complicated process and its success depends on architectural design and development. A Manufacturing Execution System (MES) was used at the expense of licensing fees for features not used in the On-Premise environment, although the features used vary depending on the manufacturing environment. In an SaaS environment, MES is applied with a function-specific container approach through a Microservice Architecture (MSA) to select and employ only the necessary functions. Furthermore, as the number of customers of virtualized applications increases in SaaS-based services, complexity and operating costs increase; thus, Multi-tenancy Architecture (MTA) technology, which serves all customers through a single instance of the application is crucial. Thus, in this study, we investigate the MTA approach and propose a suitable MTA for the manufacturing execution system. Real-time response is crucial to achieving a cyber-physical system of digital manufacturing in SaaS-based MES. Furthermore, SaaS-based big data analytics and decision-making cannot meet the needs of numerous applications in real-time sensitive workplaces. In this study, we propose an SaaS-based MSA/MTA model for real-time control of Internet of Things (IoT) Edge in digital manufacturing (SaaMES), an architecture of SaaS-based MES with MSA and MTA to meet vulnerable workplaces and real-time responses in Cloud environments. The analysis is used by applying the Autoencoder and Generic Adversarial Networks analysis model to IoT Edge for the connection between the Cloud environment and work site to enable real-time response and decision-making through communication using OPC-UA and small-scale analysis.

Empirical Investigation of Key Factors for SaaS Architecture

Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) has received significant attention from software providers and users as a software delivery model. Most of the existing companies are transferring their business into a SaaS model. This intensely competitive environment has imposed many challenges for SaaS developers and vendors. SaaS development is a very complex process and SaaS success depends on its architecture design and development. This paper provides a better understanding of SaaS applications architecture phase during the SaaS development process. It focuses mainly on an empirical investigation of key factors of SaaS Architecture phase identified from the systematic literature review. A quantitative survey was developed and conducted to identify key architecture factors for an improved and successful SaaS application. A developed survey was used to test the proposed hypothesis presented in this study. Empirical investigation's results provide evidence that vendors and developers must consider key architecture factors for SaaS development process to stand in the current competitive environment. These key factors include customization, scalability, MTA (Multi-Tenancy Architecture), security, integration, and fault tolerance and recovery management. The main contribution of this paper is to investigate empirically the influence of identified key factors of the architecture on SaaS applications success.

An Empirical Investigation of Software Customization and Its Impact on the Quality of Software as a Service: Perspectives from Software Professionals

Although customization plays a significant role in the provision of software as a service (SaaS), delivering a customizable SaaS application that reflects the tenant’s specific requirements with acceptable level of quality is a challenge. Drawing on a pr-developed software customization model for SaaS quality, two fundamental objectives of this study were to determine whether different software customization approaches have direct impacts on SaaS quality, and also to assess the construct reliability and construct validity of the model. A questionnaire-based survey was used to collect data from 244 software professionals with experience in SaaS development. Structural equation modeling was employed to test the construct reliability, construct validity, and research hypotheses. The measurement model assessment suggested that the six-construct model with 39 items exhibited good construct reliability and construct validity. The findings of the structural model assessment show that all customization approaches other than the integration approach significantly influence the quality of SaaS applications. The findings also indicate that both configuration and composition approaches have positive impacts on SaaS quality, while the impacts of the other approaches are negative. The empirical assessment and evaluation of this model, which features a rich set of information, provides considerable benefits to both researchers and practitioners.

Support mechanisms for cloud configuration using XML filtering techniques: A case study in SaaS

Software-as-a-service (SaaS) has attracted substantial attention as a software delivery and service model in a cloud computing environment. SaaS delivery can help organizations significantly reduce the cost of using software, because the resources for running SaaS applications are shared among tenants (end users or organizations). However, multi-tenancy can considerably complicate SaaS development, deployment, and maintenance as a result of a large number of co-existing tenant-specific constraints or features. Manually configuring and maintaining tenant-specific features will increase the cost, introduce possible errors, and limit scalability and flexibility. The paper addresses the problem of large variations and complex configurations. Specifically, the objective is to develop mechanisms to support automatic multi-tenant software features analysis and matching for the purposes of efficient deployment and operations in the cloud. The emphasis of this paper is on the matching between the tenant-specific requirements and the SaaS features managed by the cloud provider. This paper proposes a novel approach for cloud feature matching using XML filtering techniques to support the process of multi-tenant SaaS deployment and management. Feature modeling has been widely used to capture requirements and constraints. On the other hand, XML filtering techniques are mature and have been adopted in various problem domains. We used Yfilter, a proven and XML filtering technique, to support two multi-tenant applications: (i) Identifying SaaS configurations (in XPath representations) that satisfy tenant-specific requirements and constraints (in XML notation); and (ii) Identifying tenants that have subscribed to a specific set of SaaS features. The applications can effectively facilitate SaaS subsequent management and operations due to various changes, e.g., functionalities, constraints, cost, etc. The experimental results demonstrate that the proposed approach can automatically and correctly identify cloud system configurations that match tenant-specific requirements or identify the group of tenants that have subscribed to a particular set of cloud features. In addition, the execution time of our proposed approach is only a small fraction compared to the existing approach using the formal method, e.g., FaMa, and the configuration space is also much smaller.

Software crowdsourcing for developing Software-as-a-Service

Recently software crowdsourcing has become a viable development paradigm for Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) ecosystems. TopCoder, one of the largest competitive programming communities, enables enterprises to tap into its global talent pool and crowdsource a variety of SaaS development tasks including requirement analysis, architecture design, code, and testing. Many researchers have proposed auction-based modelling methods to characterize general software crowdsourcing. But there are few papers on the comprehensive analysis of SaaS crowdsourcing process and developer community.

Comparing PaaS offerings in light of SaaS development

Software vendors increasingly aim to apply the Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) delivery model instead of the traditional on-premise model. Platforms-as-a-Service (PaaS), such as Google App Engine and Windows Azure, deliver a computing platform and solution stack as a service, but they also aim to facilitate the development of cloud applications (SaaS). Such PaaS offerings should enable third parties to build and deliver multi-tenant SaaS applications while shielding the complexity of the underpinning middleware and infrastructure. This paper compares, on the basis of a practical case study, three different and representative PaaS platforms with respect to their support for SaaS application development. We have reengineered an on-premise enterprise application into a SaaS application and we have subsequently deployed it in three PaaS-based cloud environments. We have investigated the following qualities of the PaaS platforms from the perspective of SaaS development: portability of the application code base, available support for creating and managing multi-tenant-aware applications, and quality of the tool support.

A SaaS Development Platform based on Cloud Computing

Using Java technology to research and develop a SaaS development and maintenance platform which is based on cloud computing ,it includes many modules such as the cloud computing load network, application server, development framework, cloud computing development engine , operation and maintenance system and so on. the platform can provide a complete network client software development scheme for the development of software and integration, it can reduce the user’s request to SaaS technology, and it can help the user to achieve operation service of product on the Internet. at the same time, the platform as a development tool can be used as a powerful supplement of core electronic devices, high-end general chip and basic software products. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.11591/telkomnika.v11i3.2320

The Design and Implementation of Collaborative Editing System Based on SaaS

In recent years, collaborative editing system that is an important application of Computer Supported Cooperative Work field has made a lot of progress. But most of the collaborative editing systems have the disadvantages about maintenance and huge investment etc. In order to solve these problems, this paper proposes a collaborative editing system based on SaaS(Software as a Service). The realization of the system includes the following aspects: (1) Introducing and analyzing SaaS cloud computing model; (2) Designing the message model and communication model of collaborative editing system; (3) Setting up the SaaS development environment; (4) Designing and realizing a collaborative editing system based on the SaaS model. The collaborative editing system based on SaaS can not only support the cross-platform operation, but also reduce development cost and it's convenient for the system maintenance and upgrade.

Development Strategy of SaaS Service based on User Behavior Analysis

The appearance and evolution of cloud service is potentially one of the major advances in information and communication technology. However, it is necessary to identify and understand the various issues of cloud service, both from the perspectives of the providers and the consumers of it. While a lot of studies such as cloud business model, profit model and technology itself are currently taking place in cloud service considering provider's aspects, there are a few researches dealing with cloud service user's aspects. This paper presents the user behavior analysis focused on SaaS users and discusses the development strategy of SaaS service based on the results of user behavior analysis. In order to analyze the user behavior, we surveyed SaaS users divided into two groups such as present and future user groups. Eventually, we proposed the SaaS prospects, development strategy and policy issues based on user behavior analysis.

Enhancing Cloud SAAS Development with Model Driven Architecture

Cloud computing is a leading edge computing paradigm in which massively scalable and dynamically configured resources are offered remotely as services, over a network. With rapid transitions in hardware and software technologies, as witnessed in the recent years, the biggest challenge posed to the IT industry is technology obsolescence. Consequently, there arises a need for a software development approach that could mitigate the undesirable effects of technology change. The Model Driven Architecture (MDA) approach to software development becomes an obvious choice. In this approach, the models drive the process of software development. These models are specified at different levels of abstraction and automated tools are used for model-to-model and model-to-code transformations between the levels. In this paper, the authors endeavour to explore the MDA approach for developing cloud software applications so that the ensuing software solutions are more robust, flexible and agile, in the wake of constantly evolving technologies.