SaaS Hotel White Paper (pdf)

An introduction to Software as a Service

(SaaS) and SaaS Hotel™

1st Easy Limited – “Your Internet Resource Partner”

www.1stEasy.com | [email protected] | 0808 222 2221

SaaS deployment | Dedicated Servers | Colocation | Web hosting | Remote Backups | Email filtering

Stephen Bell, Managing Director, 1st Easy Limited

1ST EASY WHITE PAPER | JANUARY 2010

What is this document about?

This document introduces company IT Management, Directors and The Board to

the concept of Software as a Service (SaaS), explaining how and why software

houses are adopting it as a business and supply strategy. It also introduces the

SaaS Hotel™ brand from 1st Easy — its architecture and how it can help support

and benefit software companies that have adopted or plan to adopt a SaaS

delivery strategy.

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The Datacentre Colocation Business Case

Contents

The trend towards Software as a Service (SaaS) 3

Key SaaS direction business drivers 3

Key SaaS success factors 4

SaaS Hotel™ from 1st Easy Limited 6

The SaaS Hotel architecture 6

Layer 1 - Enterprise-class datacentres 7

Layer 2 – Resilient commercial grade IP transit and security 8

Layer 3 – Network layer, local and global application management and security 10

Layer 4 – Enterprise SAN and servers 11

Layer 5 – Virtualisation delivery platform 12

Layer 6 - Common Solution Service Platform (CSSP) 13

Glossary 14

About the author 16

Contents

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The trend towards Software as a Service (SaaS)

Your software business has traditionally sold products “in a box”, as one-off

sales. The key problem arising from this model is that as competition increases,

pricing is driven down and sales counters revert to zero with each month. As a

result, companies such as yours face increasing challenges to both grow and

fund the continued development of applications.

With the emergence of the commercial Internet, leading software vendors are

adopting a “Software as a Service” (SaaS) deployment model where

applications are accessed online via a web browser, as opposed to via physical

formats such as boxed DVDs which are installed on the end-user’s desktop. The

SaaS model introduces the idea of subscription based services, where access is

rented and new features are instantly made available to users. For the vendor,

this results in recurring monthly incomes from software, cost-effective

worldwide deployment and a revenue platform for both growth and re-

investment into application development. Of equal importance in a

competitive market, customers benefit from instant fulfilment and a better

experience, including factors such as improved security, reliability and

anytime-anywhere access.

Key SaaS direction business drivers

� Need for growth of company income requires a revenue platform that is

stable and increasing year on year; monthly or annual SaaS subscription

incomes provide this foundation.

� Software development costs are increasing as application security and

compliancy requirements grow; SaaS centralises application security and

compliancy, reducing such costs to a minimum.

The trend towards SaaS

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� Need for improving global distribution of applications, best done by

making applications Internet compatible. The Internet has become the

distribution agent for SaaS.

� Need for upgrade efficiencies, not available through the software in a

box distribution model, but easily possible through centralised SaaS

delivery.

� Need to better control license security and ensure end-users adopting

applications pay associated license fees. Again, SaaS ensures total

centralised control of license usage.

Key SaaS success factors

The success of a SaaS model extends beyond the application layer itself

(quality, value, functionality, security, performance etc.) and is equally reliant

on the underpinning Internet infrastructure (datacentres, networking, security,

and server platforms).

Such components can be graded in terms of reliability, performance and global

reach:

� Enterprise-class datacentres with 24/7/365 technical support and high

Service Level Agreements (SLAs) on power, networks and cooling.

� High availability, fast and reliable bandwidth (IP transit) in the required

volumes.

� High performance servers on which applications are powered.

� Comprehensive physical security measures at the datacentre (24/7/365

on-site guards, access control systems, fire suppression etc.) and digital

security at the network border/network application layers, to ensure

applications and customer data are well protected.

� Remote backup datacentres with cost effective private network

connections to allow the backup of vast quantities of data to a remote

location, with connection speeds to restore efficiently if required.


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� Global inter-connected datacentres and relationships, in order to deploy

applications closest to the end-user (minimised latency), handle

currency and customs differences and deliver the best possible

experience to the end user of the applications themselves.


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SaaS Hotel™ from 1st Easy Limited

“Your apps, any place, any time”

SaaS Hotel is an environment optimised for the deployment of software over

the Internet. Composed of six service layers, the SaaS Hotel infrastructure has

been designed to cover each aspect of successful SaaS delivery — from a

reliable foundation of datacentres and networking, through to a choice of

global delivery points to ensure the most responsive experience for end-users.

Figure 1: SaaS Hotel architecture

SaaS Hotel ™ from 1st Easy

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Layer 1 - Enterprise-class datacentres

With its roots in hosting and ecommerce application serving (the earliest

deployments of SaaS monthly revenue models) and expansion into colocation

services, the success of 1st Easy has been dependent on the selection of

datacentres appropriate to the task. Qualifying criteria include:

� Physical security: 24/7/365 on-site security, access control systems,

VESDA fire suppression

� Resilient connectivity: multiple connections with major hubs

� Power availability: dual UPS (Uninterruptable Power Supply) power feeds

and backup generators

� Environmental control: resilient air conditioning

By necessity, resilience is a factor taken very seriously by 1st Easy — a shortfall

in any of these attributes at one of our datacentres would cost our company

dearly for any outage event extending beyond just 30 minutes.

SaaS Hotel architecture

SaaS benefits

Vendor reputation and end-user application experience is

underpinned by datacentre reliability, whilst scalable off-site

backup architectures are available to protect their data.

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Layer 2 – Resilient commercial grade IP transit and security

Highly specified datacentres, expert technical support and state of the art

server architectures are important; the fact remains however, that the

heaviest reliance in SaaS application delivery is the network driving it all.

That's why 1st Easy have invested heavily in this area, including part-

acquisition of a network company.


Figure 2: Dual UK datacentre inter-connection and network configuration

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Like the best, we peer directly with the best — the most important in the UK —

and they reciprocate. This gets IP network packets from A to B via the most

direct route, enhancing end-user application performance.

This strategy has proven most effective at meeting demanding Service Level

Agreements (SLAs) and is capable of coping with the severest of Distributed

Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks.

Our dual fail-over firewall architecture has never lost the ability to deliver data

packets to and from servers and further enhances security, without

compromising the SLA levels.

SaaS benefits

Secure, high performance point-to-point delivery between your SaaS

platform and end-users ensures a smooth, crisp experience,

improving productivity and enhancing your credibility.


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Layer 3 – Network layer, local and global application management

and security

Using network technologies from trusted suppliers such as Juniper Networks, F5

Networks, HP and Cisco, we provide protected, high availability and load

balanced configurations, on both local and global scales.

We can add layers of additional control and security that perform the following

functions:

� Application Local Traffic Management (LTM), optimisation and load

balancing of your applications.

� Global Traffic Management (GTM) across multiple datacentre points of

presence, ensuring constant application services, global delivery and

automatic failover.

� Application Security Management (ASM) that significantly reduces the

risk of data loss or damage and protects intellectual software property.

� Hardware web application acceleration, capable of improving

performance by between two to ten times - reducing the need for costly

hardware upgrades and improving the end user experience.


SaaS benefits

These advances in network technology make the deployment of SaaS

far more reliable, secure, manageable and scalable to the global

market.

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Layer 4 – Enterprise SAN and servers

As a direct Enterprise level customer and reseller of Dell Corporation, 1st Easy

are able to source and deploy some of the most advanced and reliable server

architectures available in the market today. These servers form the backbone

of deployment of SaaS, delivering scalable performance, dual PSU reliability

and high end configurations to support your applications.

Our adoption of Dell PowerEdge® technology has introduced considerable

improvements in power efficiencies, reducing by a third our server related

power consumption. Quite aside from “riding the green bandwagon”, the

benefits of reduced power consumption are as much about moderating

datacentre operating costs as protecting the environment.

As part of the strategy of virtualisation delivery (see further in this white

paper), we have adopted the industry leading Storage Area Network (SAN)

platform, based on EMC Corporation's CLARiiON® CX4 product range. This SAN

platform delivers “five nines” (99.999%) availability, high throughput SAN

storage to your applications and servers, improving uptime and application

database performance.

Our dual datacentre architecture allows full disaster recover procedures to be

deployed, using EMC's MirrorView constant backup imaging at all data layers,

without impacting on server (and hence application) performance.

SaaS benefits

Using the latest Enterprise server and SAN storage technologies, we

can ensure SaaS operations run smoothly, cost effectively, and with

the minimum of impact on the environment.


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Layer 5 – Virtualisation delivery platform

The deployment of SaaS is delivered via Virtual Private Servers (VPS). The

reasons for deployment on this platform layer can be summarised as follows:

� VPS can be considered flexible physical hardware servers, which can be

instantly deployed, moved and resized - providing the flexibility to

respond to the fluid and ever changing characteristics of a SaaS

environment.

� VPS are power efficient, utilising spare capacities of the hardware server

platform layer, hence reducing the cost of SaaS deployment and

providing a greener solution for the environment.

� Management of VPS is easier at large scales, allowing support services to

easily identify servers requiring extra resources.

We offer two tiers of virtualisation that are suited to different requirements

and budgets: VMware at enterprise-level (comprehensive functionality) and

Open Source Citrix Xen technologies at entry-level (reduced, core

functionality).

SaaS benefits

Virtualisation improves application uptime, as resources are easily

redeployed at the press of a button. It introduces greater flexibility

by allowing VPS resizing on demand and helping you to grow without

expensive upgrades or downtime. The result is better application

platform deployment: cheaper, more reliable, and more scalable.


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Layer 6 – Common Solution Service Platform (CSSP)

Working closely with large USA-based datacentre provider CoSentry, we have

extended our SaaS Hotel platform to encompass deployment in the North

America. This reciprocal arrangement allows UK and European software

vendors to more effectively establish North American markets, whilst

USA/Canadian based vendors can expand into Europe. Forthcoming links with

datacentres in Australia and Asia will provide a truly global SaaS deployment

platform for the lowest latencies at end-user level.

A coordinated CSSP standard provides datacentre support teams and software

vendor clients with a unified platform that enables:

� 24/7/365 access and visibility to local support operations for clients and

technicians

� Rapid resolution of issues

� Pooling of technical resources and knowledge

� Deployment of best technical skills to fix complex issues

� A single and consistent support workflow and process of resolution


SaaS benefits

The CSSP provides improved business continuity of applications,

disaster recovery procedures and simplifies support call management

on a global basis. It also provides global visibility to control local

disaster situations, allowing the coordination of end-user

application/data redeployment on a temporary basis, should one

locality be affected by a serious outage or act of God.

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Glossary

Software as a Service (SaaS)

Software deployment model where applications are accessed by users online,

as opposed to locally via a program running on a desktop computer.

Commercial datacentre

Designed to host “mission critical” Internet applications, a purpose built

commercial facility is served by resilient networks, power and environmental

controls, and also offers high levels of physical and digital security.

(Low) latency

In the context of SaaS, latency is the perceived delay (or lag) experienced by

users of online services between issuing a command and seeing a response; low

latency (highly responsive performance) therefore, is desirable when delivering

an application online.

IP transit / bandwidth / traffic

A measure of the speed or volume of traffic that is supplied to a datacentre

client. Often referred to in Mbps (Megabits per second) or Gb (Gigabytes) per

month.

Service Level Agreement (SLA)

Typically associated with a percentage figure for the guaranteed level of

service over one year (e.g. 100% power SLA indicates power availability without

failure during an annual period). Pre-agreed monetary compensation can often

be claimed if service falls short of the stated SLA.

Uninterruptable Power Supply (UPS)

The provision of emergency back-up battery power to ensuring ongoing power

supply to equipment in the event of a mains power failure.

Glossary

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Resilience / redundancy

The provision of fault tolerant services, generally in the area of networks and

power. For example, a resilient network will consist of at least two routes, so

that if one fails, the second (backup) network will continue to service Internet

traffic.

Load balancing

Intelligent distribution of traffic amongst a server cluster to optimise

application performance and reliability.

Glossary

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About the author

This article was written by Stephen Bell, Managing Director of 1st Easy

Limited, as well as two other internet services companies in the North West of

England. Stephen has 30 years experience in business and IT services delivery

and has worked for leading companies such as Sun Microsystems, Silicon

Graphics, Sequent and IBM during his career.

As a Director and owner of companies for the last ten years, he has focused on

the delivery of advanced Internet based services to many companies, both

large and small.

Contact details

[email protected]

0800 222 2221

About the author

SaaS Hotel White Paper (pdf)

Documents

software business

saas hotel brand

saas hotel architecture6

centralised saas delivery

saas delivery strategy

concept of software

software houses

software development