Software + Services

Software+Services (S+S) combines hosted/on-demand services with local on-premise applications. By bringing together the best of both worlds, you can maximize choice, flexibility and capabilities to enable competitive advantage and drive innovation.

A good place to start this discussion is to make a delineation between S+S and SaaS (Software as a Service). SaaS is a model of software delivery where an application is hosted as a service that customers consume/use across the Internet. By eliminating the need to install and run the application on an enterprise's on-premise network, SaaS alleviates the burden of related maintenance, ongoing operation, and support. Thus SaaS should be considered 1/2 the S+S story (with the other 1/2 being on-premise software applications, managed and maintained directly by IT).

By combining on-demand and on-premise application delivery, organizations can get the best of both worlds. Here's why...some applications make sense to run on the internal network, under the control and supervision of IT. Core applications like call control and voice mail, ERP, desktop O/S, email, network admission control are all examples of the types of apps that would typically reside within an enterprise network; behind the firewall under strict IT control. These types of apps are often defined as hardened core services and usually have an 18-36 month software revision cycle. They are back-end systems with a focus on the "ilities" (i.e. availability, survivability, scalability, reliability, etc.).

On the flip side are a set of emerging user-/customer-centric Web 2.0 software applications. In past blogs we've talked about some of these: workspace apps (i.e. Facebook for the enterprise), IM and presence, collaboration tools, etc. These types of apps represent "Web-paced innovation" as they often come with 3-5 month software revision cycles. Can you imagine the challenge that presents to an IT organization if delivered in-house? Where do you think these apps would fit in the list of project priorities? This is where leveraging a SaaS model makes a ton of sense. Leave it in the cloud and let the service provider worry about keeping things up-to-date. The business reaps all the benefits of the applications and lets IT focus on core service delivery. Additionally, as previously discussed, in order to maximize the effectiveness of workspace applications and presence information, the software needs to be accessible by anyone within the enterprise ecosystem. Thus to create true universal collaboration they need to be able to traverse trust boundaries.

It's not enough just to deploy these two models side-by-side. The true value of S+S is the seamless integration of these two paradigms. The end user/customer shouldn't have to concern themselves with how an application is being delivered or if an on-premise application works with the hosted software. It's all got to be seamless. Here's a good, but simple, S+S example: lets say Mary is using an on-demand workspace application. She reviews some edits made by Frank and would like to discuss the changes with him in real time. In a true S+S environment Mary can simply highlight Frank's name from the team list and select the "click-to-call" option, provided by a seamless integration to the on-premise IP-PBX, and the call is connected via her desk phone, soft phone or mobile phone.

The Bottom Line
The S+S approach enables organizations to easily develop and support applications that provide the kind of experiences that their users and customers are looking for. S+S makes it much simpler to strike a balance between "Web 2.0-style" applications that are built to take advantage of web-paced innovation, and the "foundation" applications designed as core hardened services to deliver reliability, availability and scalability. The bottom line is that S+S enables organizations to drive innovation and build sustainable competitive advantage.