SaaS Offerings Research Articles

Optimal releasing strategy of enterprise software firms facing the competition from cloud providers

In the contemporary enterprise software market, there has been a notable surge in the utilization of SaaS products. This trend has prompted certain upstream suppliers of cloud resources, commonly referred to as cloud providers, to introduce their own SaaS offerings, thereby augmenting the competition within the industry. The matter of optimal releasing strategy encountered by software firms in this industry has been scarcely addressed in prior literature. Therefore, the present study employs the Hotelling model to depict the market segmentation in the context of a software firm’s selection among three distinct strategies, namely on-premise, SaaS, and dual version strategies, to effectively manage competition. Through an examination of the optimal pricing and profit for each strategy, and a subsequent analysis of the resulting profits, we have managed to arrive at conclusive recommendations for optimal strategy selection. Based on the analytical findings, it can be inferred that the selection of the optimal strategy can be classified into two distinct scenarios, which are contingent upon the magnitude of the unit cloud rental fee. In a high-cost rental environment, the optimal release strategy shifts from the SaaS strategy and dual version strategy to the on-premise strategy, as the disparity in value between on-premise and SaaS versions increases. In a context of low rental fee and a widening value gap, the optimal strategy choice sequence is as follows: SaaS, on-premise, dual version, on-premise, dual version, and ultimately on-premise. Furthermore, we analyze and reveal the impact of various factors on the maximum profit that software companies can achieve. The findings we have derived have significant implications for software companies’ decision-making in the face of the challenge posed by highly centralized public cloud supply.

The Benefits and Challenges of Customization within SaaS Cloud Solutions

The Benefits and Challenges of Customization within SaaS Cloud Solutions

Software as a Service (SaaS) as Cloud Computing: Security and Risk vs. Technological Complexity

The software delivery model known as Software as a service (SaaS) has evolved from cutting-edge innovation to an essential technology for many companies. However, due to the extensive range of cloud services that companies offer as part of their SaaS offerings, it is indispensable to thoroughly comprehend the dangers associated with using these services. This article describes those dangers and recommendations for the most effective methods of control that are open to managers. This study's objective is to investigate the factors of Technological Complexity, Security and Risk, and Technical Support within an organization to determine how these factors can influence an organization's end-use intention regarding cloud technology. The availability of technical support, the complexity of use, and the organization's training have been highlighted as the most crucial factors of this aim. The findings suggest that complexity negatively influences intention to use, although training and assistance are vital, with a similar weight. Shared or collective knowledge is essential in the adoption of cloud computing technologies.

Building an open source cloud environment with auto-scaling resources for executing bioinformatics and biomedical workflows

Fast and simple access to computing resources for in-silico experiments and processing of large amounts of data have become crucial factors for researchers in the bioinformatics and biomedical domains. Cloud computing offers the possibility of accessing computing resources for a flexible amount of time and with varying requirements. We discuss how a full cloud stack ranging from Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) via Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) to Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) can be built on open source technologies including the integration of high-throughput data transfers in all service types. Based on the scaling capabilities provided by the tools used on the IaaS level we devise a strategy to build a dynamically scaling PaaS offering for building and running workflows using Galaxy. Finally, applications — available as SaaS offerings — for two distinct use cases from the bioinformatics and biomedical domains are presented to demonstrate the feasibility and performance of our solution.

Cloud Implications on Software Network Structure and Security Risks

By software vendors offering, via the cloud, software-as-a-service (SaaS) versions of traditionally on-premises application software, security risks associated with usage become more diversified. This can greatly increase the value associated with the software. In an environment where negative security externalities are present and users make complex consumption and patching decisions, we construct a model that clarifies whether and how SaaS versions should be offered by vendors. We find that the existence of version-specific security externalities is sufficient to warrant a versioned outcome, which has been shown to be suboptimal in the absence of security risks. In high security-loss environments, we find that SaaS should be geared to the middle tier of the consumer market if patching costs and the quality of the SaaS offering are high, and geared to the lower tier otherwise. In the former case, when security risk associated with each version is endogenously determined by consumption choices, strategic interactions between the vendor and consumers may cause a higher tier consumer segment to prefer a lower inherent quality product. Relative to on-premises benchmarks, we find that software diversification leads to lower average security losses for users when patching costs are high. However, when patching costs are low, surprisingly, average security losses can increase as a result of SaaS offerings and lead to lower consumer surplus. We also investigate the vendor’s security investment decision and establish that, as the market becomes riskier, the vendor tends to increase investments in an on-premises version and decrease investments in a SaaS version. On the other hand, in low security-loss environments, we find that SaaS is optimally targeted to a lower tier of the consumer market, average security losses decrease, and consumer surplus increases as a result. Security investments increase for both software versions as risk increases in these environments.

A Framework for the Evaluation of Saas Impact

Nowadays the technological progress allows us to have highly flexible solutions, easily accessible with lower levels of investment, which leads to many companies adopting SaaS (Software-as-a-Service) to support their business processes. Associated with this movement and considering the advantages of SaaS, it is important to understand whether work is being developed that is underutilized because companies are not taking advantage of it, and in this case it is necessary to understand the reasons thereof. This knowledge is important even for people who do not use or do not develop/provide SaaS, since sooner or later it will be unavoidable due to current trends. In the near future, nearly all decision-makers of IT strategies will be forced to consider adopting SaaS as an IT solution for the convenience benefits associated with technology or market competition. At that time they will have to know how to evaluate impacts and decide. What are the real needs in the Portuguese market? What fears and what is being done to mitigate them? What are the implications of the adoption of SaaS? Where should we focus attention on SaaS offerings in order to create greater value? These are questions we must answer to actually be able to assess and decide. Often, decision-makers of business strategies consider only the attractive incentives of using SaaS ignoring the impacts associated with new technologies. The need for tools and processes to assess these impacts before adopting a SaaS solution is crucial to ensure the sustainability of the information system, reduce uncertainty and facilitate decision making. This article presents a framework for evaluating impacts of SaaS called SIE (SaaS Impact Evaluation) which in addition to guidance for the present research, aims to provide guidelines for the collection, data analysis, impact assessment and decision making about including SaaS on the organizations strategic plans.

A Framework for SOFTWARE-AS-A-SERVICE Selection and Provisioning

As cloud computing is increasingly transforming the information technology landscape, organizations and businesses are exhibiting strong interest in Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) offerings that can help them increase business agility and reduce their operational costs. They increasingly demand services that can meet their functional and non-functional requirements. Given the plethora and the variety of SaaS offerings, we propose, in this paper, a framework for SaaS provisioning, which relies on brokered Service Level agreements (SLAs), between service consumers and SaaS providers. The Cloud Service Broker (CSB) helps service consumers find the right SaaS providers that can fulfil their functional and non-functional requirements. The proposed selection algorithm ranks potential SaaS providers by matching their offerings against the requirements of the service consumer using an aggregate utility function. Furthermore, the CSB is in charge of conducting SLA negotiation with selected SaaS providers, on behalf of service consumers, and performing SLA compliance monitoring.

On Engineering Cloud Applications - State of the Art, Shortcomings Analysis, and Approach

Recently, Cloud Computing has become an emerging research topic in response to the shift from product-oriented economy to service-oriented economy and the move from focusing on software/system development to addressing business-IT alignment. From the IT perspectives, there is a proliferation of methods for cloud application development. Such methods have clearly shown considerable shortcomings to provide an efficient solution to deal with major aspects related to cloud applications. One of these major aspects is the multi-tenancy of the Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) components used to compose Service-Based Applications (SBAs) on the cloud. Current SaaS offerings are often provided as monolithic one-size-fits-all solutions and give little or no opportunity for further customization. Monolithic SaaS offerings are more likely to show failure in meeting the business requirements of several consumers. In this paper, we analyze the state-of-the-art of the standardization, methodology, software and product support for SBA development on the cloud, identify some shortcomings, and point out the need of a novel approach for breaking down the monolithic stack of cloud service offerings and providing an effective and flexible solution for SBA designers to select, customize, and aggregate cloud service offerings coming from different providers (25)

Cloud Computing: Implications on Software Network Structure and Security Risks

By software vendors offering, via the cloud, software as a service (SaaS) versions of traditionally on-premises application software, security risks associated with usage become more diversified which can greatly increase the value associated with the software. In an environment where negative security externalities are present and users make complex consumption and patching decisions, we construct a model that clarifies whether and how SaaS versions should be offered by vendors. We find that the existence of version-specific security externalities is sufficient to warrant a versioned outcome, which has been shown to be suboptimal in the absence of security risks. In high security-loss environments, we find that SaaS should be geared to the middle tier of the consumer market if patching costs and the quality of the SaaS offering are high, and geared to the lower tier otherwise. In the former case, it is a noteworthy result that strategic interactions between the vendor and consumers can lead a lower inherent quality product to actually be preferred by a higher tier customer segment when security risk associated with each version is endogenously determined by consumption choices. Relative to on-premises benchmarks, we find that software diversification indeed leads to lower average security losses for users when patching costs are high. However, when patching costs are low, surprisingly, average security losses can actually increase as a result of SaaS offerings and lead to lower consumer surplus. We also investigate the vendor's security investment decision and establish that the vendor tends to increase investments in an on-premises version and decrease investments in a SaaS version as the market becomes riskier. In low security-loss environments, we find that SaaS is optimally targeted to a lower tier of the consumer market, average security losses decrease, and consumer surplus increases as a result. Security investments increase for both software versions as risk increases in these environments.

Opportunities and risks of software-as-a-service: Findings from a survey of IT executives

IT providers have heralded software-as-a-service (SaaS) as an excellent complement to on-premises software addressing the shortcomings of previous on-demand software solutions such as application service provision (ASP). However, although some practitioners and academics emphasize the opportunities that SaaS offers companies, others already predict its decline due to the considerable risk involved in its deployment. Ours is the first study to analyze the opportunities and risks associated with adopting SaaS as perceived by IT executives at adopter and non-adopter firms. We first developed a research model grounded in an opportunity-risk framework, which is theoretically embedded in the theory of reasoned action. Subsequently, we analyzed the data collected through a survey of 349 IT executives at German companies. Our findings suggest that in respect to both SaaS adopters and non-adopters, security threats are the dominant factor influencing IT executives' overall risk perceptions. On the other hand, cost advantages are the strongest driver affecting IT executives' perceptions of SaaS opportunities. Furthermore, we find significant differences between adopters' and non-adopters' perceptions of specific SaaS risks and opportunities, such as performance and economic risks as well as quality improvements, and access to specialized resources. Our study provides relevant findings to improve companies' assessment of SaaS offerings. It also offers SaaS providers insights into the factors that should be prioritized or avoided when offering SaaS services to companies at different stages of their technology adoption lifecycle.

Service Composition Based Software Solution Design

Service composition and Web mash-up are promising for meeting specific business requirements by integrating multiple distributed services and SaaS (Software as a Service) has become a popular way of software development and delivery paradigm. An application that meets the business challenges the customer faces in managing its supply chain by integrating two existing SaaS offerings into a newly developed technology presented to validate the service composition technologies. This paper contributes with a practice of a light weight approach of the problems that are inevitable in SaaS integration such as data synchronization, process control, and identification. The purpose of this paper tries to provide a reference for researchers and engineers in this domain.

A SaaSI: an approved architecture for SaaS service composition

With the development of internet and web2.0 technology, Software as a Service (SaaS) has been accepted as the main way of software service delivery. However, the SaaS applications are isolated and cannot fulfill the rapidly change of business requirements. In this paper, an approach to integrate SaaS services is proposed using the integration architecture discussed, and several critical problems in the presentation, function and data layers are solved. So developers can easily combine the SaaS offerings to meet new business scenarios. We implemented the supporting platform and put it into real practice in a large-scale car manufacturing factory in China.