Business as a Service. Software as a Service Billing and Business Models

According to Gartner, Software as a Service (SaaS) is software that is owned, delivered and managed remotely by one or more providers. This means that the application users are not licensed and charged for software availability in extended periods of time, but only billed for the amount they actually use. In most scenarios, the software is either available in the form of web applications or terminal services. In the first case, the entire application is hosted on the provider’s hardware and no client software except for a web browser is needed. In the latter case, the only difference is a requirement for the customers to download a client application, but the core of the system is also hosted by the provider.

Benefits from SaaS

These facts combined mean vast savings for the consumers. The lack of an initial license fee and hardware requirements can reduce the CAPEX significantly. It is also easier to plan the spending and adapt over time. The actual cost of ownership (TCO) depends on how much the applications are used at a particular time and not on future capacity. This flexibility and affordability of the model are especially vital for businesses in today’s economy.

As for the software vendors, the SaaS model offers equally valuable benefits. Initially lower, but recurring revenue streams are much more predictable and provide the ability to plan the budgets more effectively and precisely. Due to the centralized hosting, the software is also much easier to maintain and support. All upgrades are limited to one environment and have instant effect for all users. In addition, direct access to the application logs facilitates bug fixes. Finally, SaaS can help overcome sales difficulties in
a period when businesses reorganize and freeze their IT budgets, so they cannot afford the lack of flexibility and expenses of software based on EULA licensing models.

These advantages are clearly confirmed by good results of the market leaders and optimistic projections of its researchers. Contrary to mostly negative growth forecasts coming from all over the economy, the global SaaS market is expected to grow in 2009 by as much as 30% (Gartner) to 40% (IDC).

Billing and other challenges

The positive aspects of SaaS for software vendors are unquestionable. However, a number of topics need to be addressed before an application can be offered in this model.

The inevitable challenge faced by all Software as a Service providers is setting up the billing process. Whereas traditional IPR or EULA-based sales required simple license invoicing and handling of usually long-term maintenance contracts, the “pay-per-use” model and proper management of frequently recurring transactions impose a requirement for a rating and billing engine, as well as a set of procedures. This means additional analyses and investments need to be made in order to kick off the provision of SaaS.

The necessary infrastructure is offered by many vendors (e.g. Verax Systems with its OSS/BSS Billing). In order to achieve good results, software businesses are required to develop a profitable and competitive usage billing model. One of the first steps is defining the main billing units and UDRs (Usage Data Records) related with them or software license key limitations. The most commonly used aspects are:

• Number of users and sessions per user
• Number of concurrent sessions
• Number of enabled modules / functionalities
• Number of business artifacts generated by the application (e.g. reports, invoices etc.)
• Number of objects created or stored in the application (e.g. articles, contacts etc.)
• Number of emails sent

Obviously, the rating and billing must cater for the business value of the applications, service maintenance costs (like customer support and SLAs), as well as the hardware required to host it (e.g. CPU and storage capacity). The diversity of the parameters may be a difficulty alone. However, this is where another critical challenge occurs.

It is the scalability required to handle a varying number of customers and users. Obviously, a well-established business can make long-term customer base growth plans and set sales targets in order to adapt the infrastructure on time. However, the recent economic reality has made it increasingly difficult for companies to reach those targets. In addition, some of the services offered to customers have a very seasonal nature (e.g. consumer e-commerce usually booms in the Christmas season). This means businesses need to make upfront spending on hardware capacity which is likely to be redundant for extended periods of time. A related challenge is also the provisioning of the services, which also requires appropriate infrastructural solutions to be in place.

A conclusion from the above is that it is not easy for a specialized application provider to offer their software in the SaaS model on their own. Fortunately, the market is rich in solutions similar in the idea, but oriented on hardware infrastructure. It is usually referred to as Infrastructure (or Platform) as
a Service, and a combination of the services is commonly named Cloud Computing.

“Hardware as a Service”

The Infrastructure as a Service providers reduce most of the CAPEX required from software vendors in order to start offering SaaS. Their huge data centers cater for the flexibility allowing for instant multiplication of the hardware resources as the needs grow. The dynamic scalability and provisioning is achieved with the latest platform virtualization monitoring infrastructure (hypervisors), out of which the most commonly used are Cytrix Xen and VMWare (Information Week Analytics, Sept. 4, 2009). Costs are kept down to the minimum due to built-in load balancing mechanisms.

The dynamic growth of interest in SaaS had turned providing scalability, redundancy and provisioning for its purposes into a core business of many companies. Even though, as the concept is relatively new, the implementations and market offerings differ quite considerably. The most commonly listed three services – Amazon’s EC2, Google’s App Engine and Microsoft’s Azure represent different philosophies, with hardly any platform restrictions and added services in the first case, very restrictive policies for a low price in the second, and single platform with value added services in the last example.

With specializations ranging from virtualized and scalable web hosting and disaster recovery through provision of SaaS and test environments for software vendors to leasing high-performance computing resources for research and industrial simulations, the leaders in the most common appliances include Amazon (EC2), Rackspace and GoGrid.

A majority of the providers impose a minimum service duration, although in most cases it is as low as monthly. The services are usually billed according to utility-based or availability models. The charges are commonly applied for the following parameters:

• Hours of virtual machine availability (e.g. Amazon)
• CPU cycles (e.g. Rackspace, Google)
• RAM-hours (e.g. GoGrid)
• Data transfer
• Storage

Additional services, such as monitoring, load balancing, software license fees etc. are also offered and billed for as part of bundled plans or separately. Some providers offer pre-paid plans and monthly or annual subscriptions, although their practical aspect is a price discount or a fee for the “reservation” of
a machine (either virtual or physical) with additional per-use pricing on top of it.

One of the most frequently raised disadvantages of entrusting the hosting of applications to 3rd party companies is the aspect of data security and uptimes. This is addressed by most providers who offer suitable service level agreements (SLA) with uptime levels exceeding 99%. However, it is the small-print that matters. For example, Amazon’s SLA guarantee of 99.95% is calculated on an annual basis, which means a critical system may be down for a few hours within a week with no obligation from the provider. As another one, GoGrid’s 100% SLA level refers to availability as indicated by the operator’s proprietary monitoring tools.

Service separation model

In this model, the software vendor hosts its applications in a selected Data Center providing platform or infrastructure services. The software is offered and sold to end users directly by the application provider and the data center is not part of the process. The application provider is billed for the infrastructure usage. The application sends usage reports to the provider’s billing engine. The entire billing and invoicing process is also handled by the application provider.

The main advantage of this model for the application provider is that the scalability and provisioning is entirely taken care of by the data center. This means a significant cost reduction, as no hardware needs to be purchased and set up in order to provide the service. The sales is directly between the software vendor and the customers. Both the data center and the application provider offer their core business services only.

Despite offering undoubted advantages, this model is not without flaws from the software vendor’s perspective. The requirement of running dedicated sales & marketing departments has been enough of a struggle for many software engineering businesses. The billing and invoicing on top of that may be too much for some executives to handle in a short timeframe.

Revenue sharing model

This is why an alternative and less conservative model is proposed by Verax Systems. It is based on the assumption that it is easier for a large service provider (i.e. data center) with existing billing infrastructure and procedures in place to integrate additional application usage billing processes into it than setting up two separate engines.

The advantages of this model are clearly evident for both the data centers and the application providers. As the revenue is shared between the two parties, both of them have a common business goal, so there is an obvious synergy effect. Also the total cost of this model seems to be lower, so a more competitive and profitable offer can be directed to the customers.

Application providers without the need to handle billing, invoicing and collection processes can put more focus on what they do best. This should result in lower prices for the service, as well as in development of new features or applications. Many small and rather unheard of software companies can vastly benefit due to the service provider’s footprint and market recognition. It also means a safer business with less investments in expensive infrastructure and processes.

The data centers as service-as-a-whole providers gain an opportunity to increase their market share and recognition. First of all, they can expand their customer base by attracting more application providers due to a convenient business model. In a time of increasing competition among infrastructure providers, more of them aim to find market differentiators. This objective can be met by offering added value – clearly achieved by directly providing applications in the SaaS model. Value Added Services at a low expense combined with additional revenue from commission should provide a quick ROI and increase the company’s footprint.

Verax SaaS provisioning and billing infrastructure

Verax Systems positions itself as an infrastructure enabler for the provisioning and billing of SaaS applications supporting various business models, including the revenue sharing in particular. The Verax OSS/BSS Suite covers important areas of building SaaS infrastructure, including:

• Defining new services (Product Catalogue)
• Provisioning (Provisioning Service)
• Customer self management (Self Care Portal)
• Billing of both infrastructure and application usage (Billing)
• Monitoring of the service infrastructure and measuring SLA compliance (NMS)

What is worth mentioning is that Verax Systems’ applications are not limited to the SaaS platform – all our products are oriented at carrier-grade services for IP-centered, convergent telecommunications.

Defining the services

In order to be able to efficiently handle the billing of any kind of services, they have to be precisely defined. What could be just a one-off exercise for a small business offering a limited number of rarely-changing services is usually not the case. Strong market competition enforces introducing new ways of attracting customers and thus, new services. This means that the configuration of new applications becomes a daily routine. The challenging economy is also a time when acquisitions or mergers become very common, resulting in an increase of the number and complexity of the product packages offered. In order to handle the product and service offerings in an efficient and error-free manner, a sophisticated product catalogue, capable of handing SaaS specifics is required.

The Verax Product Catalogue offers a flexible tool to define the SaaS services and means of their billing, such as:

• Service name
• Activation times
• Eligibility criteria
• Billing criteria:
  • Platform usage, such as storage, CPU cycles, data transfers and others
  • Additional application criteria, resembling more a classic license, such as the number of users, sessions, modules enabled, etc.

The Product Catalogue offers an easy, intuitive interface for not only defining the technical details of the services, but also allowing to categorize them for easier browsing, create service bundles (with mandatory and optional products), provide descriptions and photos for the customers and define multi-currency pricing.

Provisioning the services

Provisioning of individual applications is likely the most complex process of a scalable and flexible SaaS infrastructure. In order to attract customers, the offering must be tailored to the needs to the maximum extent. The resulting wide range of pricing and licensing models needs to be reflected in the provisioning mechanism. An indication of the potential challenges is that the provisioning of various SaaS applications may include the following:

• Instantiating a virtual machine from a template
• Setting platform parameters such as storage, database and others
• Setting DNS names
• Managing HTTPS certificates
• Configuring a default administrative account
• Configuring the application license, e.g. three modules for five concurrent users
• Activating the service and billing notification

Verax Systems has been working on a Provisioning Service solution to meet all the challenges faced by our current and potential customers.

Managing the services

A wide range of applications and a large number of users make for an excellent business aspect, as they directly affect the revenue gained. However, the management of customer service becomes more difficult and expensive as the customer-base grows. It is not just a question of instantiating the particular applications, but also responding to the customers’ changing needs.

The easiest way of reducing the customer service costs and making it more manageable is providing the customers with a front-end, where they can manage the parameters of their services on their own. It not only helps to improve and reduce the call center costs, but also increases customer trust and loyalty.

The Verax Self Care Portal allows this and much more, by providing enhanced possibilities of customer communication (e.g. broadcasting news, events, new products), improving the service with a service rating feature and accelerating the cash flow by presenting outstanding payment information to the customers.

SLA compliance

The provider’s liability and proposed Service Level Agreements are one of the most frequently asked questions when it comes to managed services. Security concerns are the main argument against using SaaS for 30% of decision makers surveyed by Forrester in 2009. This is why it is essential for any SaaS provider to deploy the right tools and procedures to maintain the required level of availability and data security, as well as to demonstrate them to their current and potential customers.

It is not just the hardware infrastructure that matters. In order to avoid dropping below the SLA-declared parameters by reacting to problems before they become critical, the SaaS providers need to have
a proper monitoring system in place.

Verax Systems’ Network Management System is a perfect match to those needs, both for the platform as well as the applications. The Verax NMS provides proven SLA compliance and features full FCAPS (fault, configuration, accounting, performance, security) functionality to help maintain the highest level of availability and provide tools for fault prevention. Due to support of rules-based business logic and pluggable architecture, it can be integrated with any existing platforms and applications.

Integration challenges

SaaS applications are usually built on top of existing infrastructures and services. This means that there may likely already be some systems in place. Be it existing client databases, some forms of billing systems or other environments, Verax Systems can integrate with them via:

• SOA-ready architecture with pluggable services – e.g. it is possible to replace the integrated Verax OSS/BSS database and modules with a custom plug-in connecting to an existing database
• Verax mediation, which can be used to relay the UDRs to and from the existing billing system.

Verax Systems has broad experience as an integrator of applications for telecommunications (including Tier-1 operators) and financial markets.

Growing with the needs

It seems obvious that building a proper SaaS infrastructure is an investment. While some businesses can afford to create it within a short period of time, others may need to prioritize and get going with only the most essential parts in place in the start-up period.

Verax Systems understands this and offers delivery of a perfectly-suited solution over time. The suggested and most common order would be to first deploy the provisioning service, followed by automating the billing process, and finally improving SLAs with the NMS and the customer service with the Self Care Portal at a later stage. However, we are open to any needs and ideas.

Summary

Building a SaaS platform is undoubtedly a complex and demanding task. However, setting up the necessary infrastructure around it in order to provision and bill particular applications is also a challenge. Verax Systems with its OSS/BSS Suite offers a perfect set of applications to address these challenges.

For more information please visit our website www.veraxsystems.com or contact us.

About the Author

(ArticlesBase SC #1493451)

Article Source: SOA Service Oriented Architecture, SOA Web Services, SOA Software as a Service, SaaS. http://www.articlesbase.com/ - Business as a Service. Software as a Service Billing and Business Models

SOA: Where did we lose the way?

During the past few years, one term has been touted a million times or more by analysts, by publications and, of course, by technology vendors. No prizes for guessing that the term is SOA or Service Oriented Architecture. Business soothsayers have only stopped short of prescribing SOA as the one magic potion that will solve all integration woes, and enable organizations to quickly change their underlying applications to match the agility of their business processes.

Barely a few months from its much-publicized ‘birth’, it seemed that every enterprise software vendor had an SOA strategy. While CIO’s were initially skeptical about SOA, they soon jumped on the bandwagon: some of these CIO’s knew exactly how SOA would help their organization, and the kind of investments, time and effort required to make SOA successful – but the majority had no clue. They simply went ahead because they did not want to be left behind.

Where’s my ROI?

As with any technology, after the initial hype has settled down, reality walks in with leaden feet. Five years of education, adoption and doubtful implementation have gone by now, and there are very few poster boys for SOA. While most organizations agree with the theoretical benefits of SOA, the situation ‘on the ground’ has been quite different. To their dismay, many of the eager initial adopters have realized that the promise of business agility through high reuse, interoperability by design, and loosely-coupled integration, and of course, cost savings – are elusive goals.

The Data Is In…

A 2007 InformationWeek web survey of IT professionals found that 32% of organizations using SOA said that the projects fell short of expectations. Of this, 58% said their SOA projects introduced more complexity into their IT environments, and 30% said they cost more than expected.

A study by Nucleus Research last year, found out that only 37% of companies have achieved a positive return on their SOA investments. The study also highlighted that while SOA drove developer productivity, it often ended up being the responsibility of the project or department. The result – SOA was deployed in silos, thereby impacting the return on investment. This is ironic when you consider that the concept of SOA came about to fuse integration between applications effortlessly, and reduce islands or silos of information.

Common factors for SOA failures

• Business drives technology, not the other way around

  One common mistake many organizations make is that they approach SOA from a technology perspective. They go on to choose the best vendor in terms of features, and spend a lot of time in designing the best architecture – without involving the people who will benefit from this architecture. The result – no business buy-in, near-total disinterest and even, in some cases, opposition.

  CIO’s must remember that business drives technology – and not the other way around. Till this realization dawns, disillusionment will be inevitable. Hence, strategy must drive business, business must drive applications, and applications must drive technology. IT must work closely with business, and support it with technology for implementing the strategy. Hence, organizations must start changing their business processes first, and look at how SOA can solve real business problems. The technology problems will then be relatively simpler to handle.

• Improper assessment of IT landscape

  Unless organizations identify and take a detailed inventory of applications, processes and their supporting personnel, and classify which services can be service-enabled – no SOA implementation exercise is going to be beneficial. The inventory of applications combined with the business processes supported is key to identifying the Business Services – the primary basis for delivering the benefits promised by SOA. Reusing (business) services helps in saving development time, and improves business responsiveness and agility. Hence, unless organizations have a proper assessment & understanding of their IT applications and how they support business/operations, SOA implementations are bound to end up on the ‘junk’ pile.

• Lack of governance framework

  SOA encourages the concept of loosely coupled and reusable services. This means that services from one process can be abstracted and reused by another business process or application. However, left ungoverned, SOA can allow any service to be invoked or deployed by any application – which in turn can lead to an unholy mess. Think of a traffic situation on a busy highway – with cars being allowed to go unhindered in different directions, with little automated (traffic signals) or manual (a traffic policeman) controls.

  The lack of a governance framework can be the critical success factor of an organization’s SOA strategy. Paolo Malinverno from the Gartner Group believes that “Through 2010, the lack of working governance arrangements will be the most common reason for the failure of SOA projects.”

  To successfully implement SOA, organizations must create/adopt a robust governance framework which establishes tools and practices for enforcing a common set of security, performance and other policies for every service. In short, the governance framework should govern the lifecycle of services from creation to deployment.

• Vendor lock-in

  Despite the promise of plug-and-play services and a world of interoperability, we have seen every product vendor use a different roadmap with different technological approaches for implementing SOA. It is ironical that the purpose of SOA is independence from vendor lock-in, so that you can choose to add, remove or plug in components or services from different vendors, as you want. If your organization is trapped with a single vendor, it is obvious that your SOA strategy is not working, as the cost of upgrade or integration with a third party application will be as expensive and time-consuming as it was earlier. The bottom line is simple – don’t let the vendor drive your architecture.

Making your SOA implementation a success

A successful SOA implementation can significantly improve operational effectiveness and deliver considerable ROI. However, implementing SOA requires commitment and buy-in from top leadership. High-level management must articulate the common vision that promotes and explains the business case for using SOA, and effectively tackle any cultural or change management issues that are caused due to the implementation.

The architecture must be planned with a vision for the future, with detailed linkages between IT and business, and how the solutions will change if the strategy changes. Organizations must also have a leadership team to oversee implementation. This team would govern the implementation and provide direction through decision making, training, and resolving issues related to culture or skills.

SOA is not a magic potion or a silver bullet that will wipe away all integration woes. As with any technology, SOA first needs business process re-engineering, and then the technology that supports it. The bottom line - if you do not have a clear business case and a roadmap, then don’t expect too much from your SOA implementation!

About the Author

Swati Parashar

(ArticlesBase SC #1171963)

Article Source: SOA Service Oriented Architecture. http://www.articlesbase.com/ - SOA: Where did we lose the way?

Software as a Service (saas) - Change is Imminent

Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) is receiving a lot of attention in analysts’ briefings and technology trade press articles. In the past year, SaaS has emerged from its pioneering group of start-ups and medium-sized vendors to be embraced, albeit awkwardly, by software giants including Oracle and SAP. Much of the attention SaaS has garnered in recent months has focused on the new business model that on-demand software enables. However, some veteran technologists who’ve adopted SaaS for their own livelihood, and analysts as well, say that the phenomenon might well be the catalyst for a far wider-ranging discussion on software development for the next generation. The highly interactive Web 2.0 model and iterative development have dovetailed to force even the most traditional programmers to at least consider the end of lengthy development cycles. Software as a Service develpment companies are now perfectly positioned to provide all business software applications delivered via the clooud - no software to download, no risk of piracy, and no risk of hard drive failures.

Technology and culture driving business One major technological factor in advancing the new development models might be the rise of service-oriented architecture (SOA) and Web services standards. The ASP model, championed in the late 1990s and early years of this decade, never took off because its one-to-one architecture was inherently difficult to scale. SaaS technology, however, takes advantage of a one-to-many SOA-enabled architecture that can offer customized services to different customers, and even different branches of the same enterprise. One example is a customer relationship management application offered on a SaaS basis by LiveCRM LiveCRM enables companies to drive sales productivity, increase visibility, and expand revenues with an affordable, easy-to-deploy service that delivers success to companies of all sizes. The beauty of a product like LiveCRM lies in its ability to adapt to different business practices and provide a unique customised solution to each without rebuilding the interface each time - This is where SaaS becomes so powerful. Deploying a SaaS application means a major culture change within the organisation. The change comes not just in how things are seen and reported on through aq software product, but also how the product itself is used. Many large organisations (predominantly the older ones) have spent a significant amount on training personnel and getting them used to the current systems and software products used. In my experience, many of these personnel are not as skilled as some of the younger counterparts which presents a very steep learning curve for businesses. However, there is light at the end of the tunnel. SaaS can be deployed in bite sizes; module by module and as people get more used to it, a full scale deployment can be considered. Also, a carefully managed implementation including change management, workshops and solution recipes are also a great way to minimise this learning curve. So a change in technology, in this case, also demands a change in culture. But a change in culture is already happening The technological advancements underpinning the new methodologies are being complemented by a new “ground up” ethos that will force academic program leaders and enterprise strategists to retool their own thinking. In fact, the shift is a generational shift. Just as the young technologists of the late 1980s created both ad hoc and formal transitions of enterprise data from mainframes to PCs and client-server architectures, the next-gen architectures of on-demand software are being pioneered by those who have grown up working with instantly available Web-based applications. From an executive perspective, SaaS is less about how software is going on-demand, and more about how the generation of users who have grown up with the Web as a technology are coming into the workforce. And this crowd expects the tools that allow things they’re used to—collaboration, immediate ubiquitous access, and so on—SaaS will make sure they get what they want. Web 2.0 and socially-oriented computing, as most people think of it, is about Facebook and mashups and things like that. While that’s a big component of the overall discussion, what I try to do is take those concepts and say, ‘How do I take those ideas, which are incubated in the Internet kiddies’ domain, and put that in real business terms—enterprise quality of service, or levels of security, compliance, audit, control and so forth—that are enterprise-worthy or government-worthy, and still keep all the beauty and openness and free-flowing nature of the Web 2.0 world? Uneasy transition Gartner’s Norton says the transition to SaaS-based architectures is still in its early phase. “By 2010, 15 percent of large companies will start projects replacing their ERP backbone with a SaaS offering,” he says. “A little later, Tier 1 consultancies will offer SaaS services, and 30 to 40 percent of vendors offering SaaS service by 2012.” Norton estimates about half of the Web 2.0 projects visible to end users are still developed using noniterative development methods, but he sees that changing. However, Norton says he has seen the promise of some flexible projects run aground just as they might become more useful in a cross-enterprise manner, because corporate executives lose their nerve and fall back on old development methods as projects get larger. “They don’t know what they’ve got, and it’s easier to say, ‘If we put the standard controls in place, we can control this beast.’ They only have the illusion of control.” In all but the most daring organizations, it will take time to realize that the illusion of control might best be modified in favor of a collaborative, nonhierarchical approach. Vandervoort says the next generation of developers is coming out of universities well-informed of these technologies, but are receiving little to no formal training in how to use them in enterprise settings. “The shift that has to occur, both in academic training and in enterprise thinking, is to move away from the idea that IT builds the answer for the user,” he says. He sees Web 2.0 enabling IT to shift its thinking toward enabling users to build their own solutions. In doing that, he says users will find their own answer via the path of least resistance, or POLR. What do you think?

About the Author

Manas is CEO of Genesis Interactive, an Auckland based SaaS vendor and technology innovator.

(ArticlesBase SC #712170)

Article Source: Software as a Service (SaaS), SOA Service Oriented Architecture, SOA Web Services, SOA 2010. http://www.articlesbase.com/ - Software as a Service (saas) - Change is Imminent

Gain Deep Visibility, Minimize Disruptions and ensure Compliance with SOA Management

* Extensive real-time metrics and alerts

* Snapshot problem transactions in real-time

* Detect and contain rogue service deployments

Coca-Cola is saving millions of dollars thanks to its implementation of SOA Management and Governance by using Software AG's solution called webMethods Insight. webMethods Insight extends operational visibility beyond the edge of your Integration Server into all systems in your heterogeneous infrastructure and helps minimize outages/failures, and ensures quick resolution when outages/failures do occur.

Service-Oriented Architecture is fast-growing in popularity, however it does present changes to typical application accountability structures. No longer can IT simply point to one application as the root cause of a disruption. A critical challenge confronting any SOA implementation is the need to manage services within a distributed environment for optimal performance and reliability. Lacking real-time visibility and control over the run-time environment, enterprises often struggle to anticipate operational changes, minimize subsequent disruptions, and ensure full compliance with SOA processes, policies and contracts. The first step in SOA Governance is to create a repository that catalogs your organization's web services and policies. The next step is SOA Management: the active monitoring of those processes and policies including alerts when failures occur to ensure a quick resolution. Establishing SOA Governance processes that your developers, project managers and architects are asked to follow might not be enough to control your distributed and heterogeneous architecture. By implementing SOA Management, you gain infrastructure-wide visibility that discovers services and their dependencies automatically. This requires monitoring your SOA infrastructure, giving you the ability to quickly troubleshoot the root cause of any disruption. A successful SOA Management solution will identify and send you a snapshot of individual transactions that violate policies to easily isolate the root cause of problems with no added overhead. The ability to know who is using services and how much service capacity is consumed by specific clients and users is critical to your overall success. The SOA Management capabilities are:

About the Author

Software AG's customers provide testimony to its ability to deliver software for improving business processes and its software portfolio helps foster new levels of IT agility through SOA and allows the rapid creation of new business processes with BPM.

Topoics : SOA Management, Service Oriented Architecture. Source: goarticles.com

Green Computing: What lies beneath?

Consumption of energy sources has a negative reaction on the environment. Datacenters, PCs, printers and other IT gadgets use a large amount of power and consequently cooling energy is needed to counteract the power usage, which will be an endless circle of energy waste and also increased expenses.

Green IT via Green computing

Green computing is the technology where organizations adopt environmentally responsible use of computers and other related resources like central processing units (CPUs), servers and peripherals. Further, to maximize energy efficiency and sustainable development, the firms implement use of non-toxic materials, or making investments in future green concepts such as alternative materials. Green practices include the implementation of energy-efficient consumption of resources and proper disposal of e-waste.

In 1992, the green-computing movement was started with the Energy Star program so that the IT industry can pick up various environmentally sustainable practices. With the reduction of IT costs in mind, various companies wants to change their older machines especially datacenters because they consume more energy. Hence, various companies can minimize energy waste and carbon footprinting, various Green Computing Solutions can be incorporated like:

Server Consolidation: Companies can consolidate their server usage, which reduces the amount of servers needed by optimizing the available capacity, thus saving energy resources.

Virtualization: Virtualization is the technology, which allows companies' business application to be managed by independent host's hardware. It allows companies of all sizes to cut costs, improve IT services and manage risk.

On-Demand Computing: By adopting this solution, companies can demand computing resources like CPU, applications bandwidth and storage on-demand basis that decrease the amount of wasted energy.

Utility computing: It is a type of service that works on pay-as-per-usage basis. It provides flexible plans for computing usage and improves productivity. Through these services, firms can check their energy expenditures and bring their costs down.

Grid computing: It is a cost effective way to acquire computer resources. The apps can combine geographically dispersed resources to process a large amount of data, without consuming large amounts of energy.

Service Oriented Architecture (SAO): It consolidates business processes, combining business management services. Various firms adopt SOA to lower their costs and increase efficiency via speed and security for web applications.

Bad Eco-Design

Recently, an effort to save energy bills with controlling carbon dioxide emissions to save the entire planet was introduced, called USB Eco Button, but fails on both accounts.

The device is a USB-powered plastic button that can be used on any Windows based machine, except those running Windows 7. It puts the machine into a low-power energy saving mode. The USB Eco Button has software that monitors users' PC power usage and also records how much CO2 the Eco Button has saved.

However, various analysts said that the Eco Button is largely unnecessary, since such low-power modes can be applied through software-only fixes. Therefore, the material and energy used to manufacture it, the Eco Button could be doing more harm than good. Further, the price tag of $14 for such device could be more painful for the buyer.

Recent Trends

Various companies like HP, Wipro, IBM, HCL etc are pioneer in using and adopting green initiatives. Recently, Microsoft and Samsung Electronics had joined hands to promote the green IT benefits by combining Samsung's memory chips with Microsoft's new operating system, Windows 7. Samsung said that with 4GB RAM and Windows 7, user

Topics : Geeen IT, Green Computing, SOA, Service Oriented Architecture. Source: goarticles.com

SOA Adoption for Dummies

Learn the project-oriented way to achieve your SOA vision. SOA Adoption for Dummies provides concrete and practical methods you can use to turn your SOA plans into SOA reality. The book covers how to:

• Use SOA to solve business problems
• Go from an SOA blueprint to SOA adoption
• Learn how to use SOA Governance to set up policies to guide the growth and usage of your service portfolio
• Deal with IT "tribal warfare" that impedes SOA
• Connect your SOA plans with your integration platform

Using SOA, enterprise architects create plans called SOA blueprints that guide the redesign of IT systems and organizations. Realizing these plans involves a process called SOA adoption. This book describes our approach to SOA adoption, which we call SOA rocket science. SOA adoption, like a real-world rocket, experiences a danger zone between blast-off and the weightlessness of orbit. When fully realized, SOA can transform your business. But until firmly established, your SOA dreams can plummet back to earth.

This book is focused on SOA adoption: concrete and practical methods SOA builders use to make SOA plans into SOA reality. SOA Adoption for Dummies shows you specifically what's important in SOA adoption and how to stay focused on it.

No time to read? Listen to our SOA Made Simple podcast series. Based on the book, the series features short podcasts on each chapter.

Discover the best way for your organization to adopt a Service Oriented Architecture! SOA Adoption for Dummies makes your journey to SOA as easy as possible. Written for people both new and familiar with SOA, the book tells in 'plain English' what's important in an SOA adoption and how to stay focused on it!

About the Author

Software AG's 4,000 global customers provide testimony to its ability to deliver software for improving business processes and drive an agile IT infrastructure. Software AG's leading software portfolio helps foster new levels of IT agility through SOA and allows the rapid creation of new business processes with BPM.

Topics : SOA Adoption, Service Oriented Architecture. Source: goarticles.com