Reply to comment

Cloud computing is the future of business, where as SaaS isn’t necessarily the future of business, as much as it is a business/design concept.  There is this common misconception that “cloud” computing is hosted applications or services.  That is not cloud computing, that is SaaS.

SaaS stands for “Software as a Service” a basic example of “SaaS” is webmail.  If your organization has email but offers a fully functional webmail client then, they’re offering software (email client) as a service that is not dependent on your computer.

NOW, your webmail may exist in a Cloud – confused yet?  Well before the internet became useful – by useful I mean fast and utilized for something other than email and that other thing, we had “clustering.”  Clustering was essentially taking identical hardware (server or appliance) and having them work together as a team or as a backup for each other.  This is how the world existed before VM.

Yes, in walks virtual computing, the concept that you can have multiple servers running on a single piece of hardware all independently.   With the perfection of VM and dramatic increase in server performance IT managers are able to implement “clouds” which is essentially a cluster of virtual servers.  The cloud can be tied locally and external through the use of high speed wan connections.  Web hosting companies have been building clouds for quite some time and continue to improve upon them to this very day.

I am over generalizing the cloud concept in this blog; however, if I were to write about it in detail then it would go on for pages and be less of a blog and more of an article.

Cloud computing is the future of business.  The growing number of ways that IT departments are looking to cut long term investment costs while maximizing ROI makes cloud computing and the scalability of cloud computing much more lucrative.  The concept though is being confused with that of SaaS and it is worth noting they’re two very different concepts.  You can have a SaaS running in a cloud – thus maximizing your flexibility, scalability, and ROI of a particular application.

So in closing, Cloud computing is a cluster of virtualized appliances/hardware whereas SaaS is nothing more than a hosted application.  One can over generalize it and say that Cloud computing is the new clustering, and SaaS is the new Citrix.  Neither of which is really a new fandangled concept, as my boss so eloquently put “SaaS use to be called on-demand”

Take your first step in building a better competitive edge by contacting us today.