Counter arguments on attackers of SAAS!

Recently Information Week came out with an article that SAAS models were not always the best mode to go for enterprises to switch to cloud computing and the arguments that they gave basically were the following. I have marked them in italics and counter argued my point.

Not always cheaper. My colleague John Foley writes how San Jose CIO Steve Ferguson ran the numbers and found his creaky Outlook/Office 2003 costs $1.88 per user per month, compared with about $3 he'd expect to pay for Google Apps. Our recent outsourcing survey finds most people like SaaS and cloud computing: 37% say they perform better at lower cost. But 18% say they perform better at a higher cost. That may be fine, but has any SaaS vendor given you that Cadillac sales pitch lately--that it's not cheaper but better? Even slightly cheaper might not be enough, given the potential compliance and vendor viability risks.

Agreed they are not always cheap and in many scenarios and can become costly if based on per user model but the author ignores the long term return on investments by adopting cloud computing and SAAS models .Upfront implementation costs may be on the higher side but the internet and web give unlimited opportunity to increase your user base, increased user base means more exposure, more revenue, and the ratios normally leaning more favorably to the client side that implements cloud services. One shouldn’t forget the need for business’s today is accessibility of information on both sides of the quadrant be it internally within the organization or externally satisfying customer requirements. Desktop computing and desktop applications provide a bottleneck in the speed of operations.

Every app doesn't fit the SaaS model. There's a bunch of applications that CIOs just aren't thinking about converting to services, such as graphics-intensive apps like computer-aided design and many financial and transactional apps, which tend to be latency-sensitive and hold data that companies prefer to keep on premises. It might seem like every up-and-coming software category is a shoo-in for SaaS, but consider iRise, a growth company that provides application development visualization software--and has no plans for SaaS. Oracle sold $1.7 billion worth of good ol' software licenses last quarter. Microsoft's new Office 2010 includes a substantial Web element, but the core pitch for this multibillion-dollar franchise is still around the client software. In our survey, 39% of companies not using SaaS say there's no business requirement for it. On-premises software is far from a legacy concept.

Again the argument is weak not all business organizations out there are graphic or design focused as these companies fall under specialized service oriented firms whose needs are different.  The business’s that do not recognize the need will fall behind just as Microsoft was slow in catching up on the internet race. Survey respondents saying there is no need haven’t really assessed the environment needs correctly or asked how better serve the customer and more importantly have not asked the question how fast are their latency times reduced in serving those customers.

Security. SaaS vendors get that their existence hinges on rock-solid security. But they're also a bigger target--banks need guards cuz da crooks know da money's there. Our survey finds 39% of companies not using SaaS cite security as the biggest reason (tied with no business requirement as the most-often cited). This one will never entirely go away.

Vulnerability levels are a concern but the same has always been true for desktop applications since the last three decades, a worm can be released to crash any desktop application. A good SAAS model will not only have an advantage of better encryption and security features but it will also be the right venue to offer distributed computing which will synch data back and forth with client and Server applications.

Governance. It's different from security. Even people who trust a SaaS vendor's security might pass for compliance reasons. For example, Global Crossing, a user of Microsoft SharePoint and Exchange for collaboration, doesn't consider SaaS versions because, as a foreign-owned company that has contracts with the U.S. government, it faces a maze of data-handling rules best met on premises. Recruiting firm Manpower, a big customer of Salesforce.com with strong faith in its security, keeps some of its most sensitive client data in-house because of internal governance rules, says CIO Denis Edwards. It will get interesting when companies try to keep the sensitive data on premises while tapping online services to interact with that data to create the end-user experience they want.

One of my favorite topics to address and my comment here is good Governance and Governance practices are as good as their implementers are. Regulations can be followed but the idea is to be flexible enough that you can react to market needs and market conditions and comply with those frameworks and regulations be it for a full fledged SAAS enterprise application or a traditional organization with no big computing needs.

SaaS is winning a lot these days. But it won't win 'em all.

The only point I completely agree with which the authors finally state the obvious making their whole argument weak. The age of true networking has arrived, and its going to stay. The World is Flat and a little bit closer.

My counter arguing rants for the day.

Sam Kurien

Is Agile Project Management even an an appropriate term?

To give you a break from my silverlight and WPF babbling I will branch out occasionally into different topics to keep you interested and at the same time tone down my boredom from talking about the same topics again an again.  As the title suggests lets explore if "Agile Project Management" is even an right term that is being so loosely used these days.. To understand we need to first answer what Agile software development is?.

Agile software development has it roots in OOP (object oriented programming) where iterative development, use of a particular functionality could be reproduced, ability to plug in cross-functionally or design development methods for re usability of components could be done in an easily gave rise to the practices of agile software development into being.  This was extended across development teams for collaborative purposes during development or the life cycle of the project. Agile software methods break tasks into small increments and avoid long term planning, time frames are shrunk to a max of four weeks for a set of tasks to be completed which may involved requirement analysis, design, coding, testing and acceptance of that stage. Documentation is produced all along with those activities happening in tandem.

Usually in an agile software development team members usually come from cross-functional expertise and because hierarchal power structures aren't present decisions are made quick and responsibilities are assigned for development, changes, bug fixes, and releases. The team's size can vary from five to ten people but larger projects are usually comprised of such teams collaborating in real time and often Agile software development  then becomes a daunting and challenging task. However these days we have measurement metric softwares that measure the progress of each task on each day by which Agile development becomes easier. So coming back to the question I posed to mix the terms Project Management (PMP) and Agile Project Management wouldn't be right as they both address management of software development life cycles differently, they have different methods and practices. Traditionally Project management adopts the 7 step or waterfall approach the Agile software development uses methods like Agile Unifed Process (AUP), Agile Modeling, Agile Data Method, Scrum, Extreme Programming and while its practices consists of Test Driven Development (TDD), Behavior Driven Development (BDD), Pair Programming and the RITE method. I may explain each of these methods or practices some time in the near future.

I am sleepy now...some more about this in the far future.

Sam Kurien

Full Screen Applications

Often there is a need to run a Silverlight application full screen. This is often achieved by creating a small button or a link which toggles the application to full screen and using an escape sequence toggling back to small area within your website. The code to do this is quite simple and straight forward:

{ if (!Application.Current.Host.Content.IsFullScreen) { Application.Current.Host.Content.IsFullScreen = true; } else { Application.Current.HostContent.IsFullScreen= false; }

The explanation to this piece is quite simple so here its is - the if statement checks the current state if the app screen is in full screen mode or not. The if condition starts of by asking If Application is Not full screen then do something in this case set it to full screen or else do something else (in this case set back the app mode from full screen to its original state running within the web page.)

Raving About Some iPhone Apps

Smartphones have changed the way we work, communicate, translate, and do almost anything that our work and personal spheres entail us to do. I have been liking the way I intereact with my iphone and use some apps to enhance the productivity of my life. You will find anywhere on the internet the top 10 or the top 50 or the top 100 iphone apps but here I am going to introduce the ones that have changed my life.

Top on the list is EasyTasker a Project management App that allows you to track work projects, projects due, emails, and ability to push work to assigned individuals and synch tasks when and where you needs them all wirelessly. The ther cool things it can do is track timesheets, invoices, user groups and even paypal integration to buy tools that may be necessary for the project. All activites can be synchronized across all your computers.

TurboScan is next on the list, it allows me to to scan receipts, bills, documents save them as images and push them tas PDF to my business or personal email accounts.

aNotes or Awesome Notes is an app that helps me takes notes and classify them into folders, sticky notes, and collate them into books. The app allows me to synch and transfer to my gmail accounts Google Docs, Evernote and the unique ability to add wallpapers and pics as backgrounds to my notes. A plus for the traveller to paste that pic while note taking for your blog or your memoir. It’s also really easy to move notes around, change their look (there are eleven different themes), and sort them by name or date. An annoying feature for me but a boon for the many who forget to put titles on a note is aNote initially auto assigns from the first line, but can be easily changed by tapping the title in notes view. If ‘cool’ user interfaces is what you’re looking for, Awesome Note comes out with flying colors (literally!).

If your looking for a Genie among Apps look no farther, the App Genie is 26+ tool app set  that I love and among them one stands out the scanning of barcodes and isbn to check prices of products and books (in my case) and shop or order it from the cheapest place possible. You genie makes you an intelligent shopper indeed! The translator tool is not bad and helps you talk or email in multiple language. The country facts app in the tool set is a favortie pastime as it helps me brush on country facts and all the trivial useless facts that hopefully may come handy some day. The unit converter and the battery indicator has a guy that voices out the status of your battery and conversions. And the best part is its only $1.99...so go for it...you will have no regrets.

The Bing and Google search Apps are next favorite on the lists and the best part is geo voice searching features, pulls up the nearest starbucks, car mechanic, shopping mall, anything and everything you are searching for. Intelligent/smart searches will be a subject I will be writing on in the future but these apps are wonderful and the best thing is these search engines are increasingly becoming "accent" sensistive which means they are able to understand English words spoken by non-native speakers a plus in times of trouble. Personally among the two I I have seen Bing working better with voice search but with added features of visual image search being more attractive than Google.