View from the Edge

What will you ride at the Carnival?

It is almost half-way through the "Carnival" season in New Orleans, Louisiana - the traditional pre-lenten party that runs up until Fat Tuesday (February 24th for those without a calendar handy). Sorry if I've got New Orleans on the brain lately, but it is because we have already started planning for Exchange 2009 - being held in the "Big Easy" this June.

One of this year's tracks will focus on Application Modernization - how you can make it easier to update your application with smarter design and innovative methods - all to make your application and your business more competitive. We've gotten a number of great breakout proposals submitted so far - ranging from great success stories, how customers like you have implemented solutions faster and better than before, to some great failures - with lessons of what not to do. And of course there is the technology - the details and examples from the experts on how to make your products do what you need them to while still doing your day job.

So what do you want to see at Exchange to help you make your application more competitive?

Just like any modern-day carnival - with the rides, parades and neat things to see - Exchange always seems to present everyone with the problem of figuring out which breakout sessions to attend. And of course, you can never see them all...

So help us prioritize all the neat things to see in the MOD track. Send me your feedback and input so you can get to see everything you want to in New Orleans (OK - I'm just talking about at the conference... Once you are on Bourbon Street, you're on your own...(-; )

• What are the biggest business challenges that you are facing with your application and your organization today?
• Do you know how you will solve them?
• What is stopping you from solving them?
• What is the one change you need to solve your most important issue?

Send me your feedback today. It will help us give you the "Big Easy" ideas for keeping your application and your business competitive in today's economy.

UPDATE: Exchange 2009 is going online. To learn more about Exchange 2009, visit here.

Transforming your Application in a SaaS-y kind of way…..

The SaaS approach to deploying software solutions is emerging and evolving. As customers continue to expand their acceptance of SaaS, as existing software vendors seek to take advantage of this model and as more new SaaS vendors emerge, it is helpful to develop an architectural model that encompasses all of the issues a SaaS offering may need to address.

Faster implementations, automatic upgrades, increased software flexibility, and higher customer responsiveness all are needed to increase your software's value. These change the application software cost/benefit equation and enhances the customer ownership experience for the better.
 
SaaS providers have to design and operate their software using a new approach that results in a higher value, but with a far lower cost structure. While on the surface SaaS offerings will look the same as hosted legacy software, it is not always the same “under the covers”.
 
SaaS offerings have several characteristics that lower costs and increase value significantly for customers, both up-front and over time. Many costs that legacy software providers incur are completely eliminated by a SaaS vendor's product design and business model, so the SaaS vendor can deploy its resources in ways that provide far higher value to customers.
 
SaaS solutions are architected to be extremely configurable to avoid customizations. The terms customization and personalization are sometimes used distinctively and sometimes interchangeably. Personalization is often used to describe presenting content to individual users based on knowledge of who they are and customization is thought of as defining certain preferences that affect how an application behaves. Providing functionality in a SaaS application to allow customers and their users to configure the solution according to their specific needs (as opposed to code changes) is critical to achieving the goal of providing a single application shared by everyone. This requires careful thought, advance planning and design in the overall application.

The key to success is to provide as much configurability in your application as possible.  Thus code customization and implementation delays that customers typically incur in an on-premise solution are completely eliminated, both during initial implementation and with each upgrade, removing another significant cost of ownership for customers.

Delivery of the SaaS application via the web lowers the deployment costs associated with the application, and expands the reach to more end-users.  The key to remember is to keep it as simple as possible for users to find what they need and understand what to do next. The old standard concepts of top navigation to get to the main areas of an application and sub navigation to get to the different functions within a main area has become so well known that virtually anyone with any experience clicking around the web will feel comfortable following this general paradigm.

Most existing ISVs do not transform their applications overnight, but instead do so as their SaaS business evolves.  Many have developed a “playbook” to guide the evolution of their offerings. The playbook does not start or end with the technology, but rather focuses on the new business opportunities that can be built around SaaS-based technology.

Progress Software recently developed a series of Whitepapers that outline the Architectural components to be considered when developing a SaaS application.  Go to PSDN Online to access the SaaS Expertise Center to view these SaaS Architectural overview papers. http://www.psdn.com/library/kbcategory.jspa?categoryID=2129  And as always – any questions or comments – let me know at cosmith@progress.com.

The Importance of Disaster Recovery in Your Market

   Disaster Recovery (DR) has been a hot topic in many different verticals for a long time.  Progress Software deals with all of these verticals.  Loss means destruction of data as well as theft.  In a recent survey 75% of respondents have experienced a hardware or software outage within the last year (Symantec DR FIndings  2008).  We can categorize companies by their vertical market and by their size.  I will focus first on the business vertical aspect.  

   Every vertical that you can imagine needs Disaster Recovery.  I will use some verticals as examples of ends of the Disaster Recovery maturity spectrum.   Some institutions within these verticals are farther along than others.  Unfortunately I am forced to use these generalities to be able to discuss different concepts.

   Financial verticals (stock markets, mortgage companies, banks, insurance companies, etc) place a very high value on their data.  This vertical has a head start over most other verticals due to the nature of the business and more regulation and requirements around loss of data.  For this reason, they have developed much more strict standards and requirements, both voluntary as well as regulatory, that help them build and maintain their Disaster Recovery plan.

   Other verticals tend to be a bit more relaxed when it comes to Disaster Recovery planning.  Manufacturing has lagged behind due to the nature of the business and more stress being placed on production of goods versus loss of data (and dollars).

   Retail falls between these other two vertical markets.  Plans are a bit more formal, but are not as stringent as the financial vertical market.  Credit card information theft has brought this to the forefront and requirements such as PCI DSS (Payment Card Industry Data Security Standards) have forced the retail sector to deal with Disaster Recovery, security, and keeping data safe.

   No matter what your vertical, if your company expects to stay in business after a disaster then you must have some type of a plan.  The plan must include the complete application recovery environment.  Just recovering the database is less than useless unless you have the application to support it.

   What is your experience in your vertical?  Do you see your industry moving towards Disaster Recovery planning being critical to the business?  I’ve love to hear what you see in your business.

In my next entry I will talk about Disaster Recovery based on your company size. 

Until then, if you can’t recover then don’t let it fail.

Brian B.