Johannesburg, 18 Jun 2007
Companies reviewing their disaster recovery and business continuity plans should be considering software as a service (SaaS) as a viable alternative.
This is particularly relevant to businesses that fall within the small and medium business (SMB) sectors. IDC says SMBs are one of the reasons 2007 will be the year for SaaS acceleration.
In their Top 10 predictions, they report that SaaS and now BaaS (business as a service) are accelerating the growth of innovation and new micro-communities, offering new software and services.
They believe this will change the IT landscape and fuel a year of what IDC refers to as hyper disruption.
Driving SaaS awareness further is McKinsey`s latest research, which shows that 61% of CIOs at North American companies with sales over $1 billion plan to adopt one or more SaaS applications in the next year. This is a dramatic increase from the 38% in 2005. Deutsche Bank has also projected that the SaaS market will be worth $30 billion by 2013, representing 50% of all application software spending.
What makes SaaS viable for disaster recovery is that it includes an outsourced services centre offering a wide spectrum of business application and professional services, using the SaaS business model as a delivery channel.
Remote access and the use of applications are provided to clients over a network (Internet) for a fee. The client`s applications and data are hosted off-site on servers in a centrally managed data centre, where they are secured, supported, maintained and upgraded. Typical business applications include general and specialised accounting, human resource and payroll, online tax services, CRM, electronic invoicing, e-mail and resource collaboration.
From a disaster recovery perspective, a managed service hub provides regular offsite backups with facilities to ensure that, in the event of a catastrophic failure, the company is able to recover.
Redundant hardware with dual path connectivity ensures maximum system availability, while complete end-to-end change control ensures limited service interruption in the event of untested changes.
The business case for SaaS as a disaster recovery tool is a solid one. It has experienced a rebirth and is one of the driving forces behind most CIOs quest to deliver real business value.
About the author: Jeremy Waterman is the managing director of Softline ACCPAC.
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