“The danger of storing your data in the cloud, part n.”
Read the full article at www.techcrunch.com
Online Backup Company Carbonite Loses Customers’ Data, Blames And Sues Suppliers
March
An article originally posted on TechCrunch
In my opinion…
Well, that summarizes my thoughts quite well. Online storage / backup providers are especially hit by problems recently but others can have problems too, even “big names” like Google had privacy issues with Google docs recently.
So should you avoid SaaS all together ?
Well … even if online SaaS services have some risks associated with them doesn’t mean you’re safer with just your local application on your laptop or a local server on your PME network.
In this particular case, from a data integrity point of view, hard drives in a air-conditionned datacenter are safer than a single external HDD on your desk … For backups, the best option is probably not to rely on a single layer but have both local and remote backups. For more complex services, make sure you have exit solutions in case you need to. And if you become really dependent to a service, check
what SLA you can get and also what happens if that SLA is broken.
Ultimately the choice is yours to take …
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Gartner Fact Checks the Five Most-Common SaaS Assumptions
February
An article originally posted on www.gartner.com
“The rise in popularity of the software-as-a-service (SaaS) delivery model has resulted in a number of assumptions about this emerging model, but it has been difficult for many companies to separate truth from fiction, according to Gartner, Inc. Gartner analysts have examined the top-five assumptions to provide a bit of a reality check on the state of the SaaS industry.”
Read the full article at www.gartner.com
In my opinion…
Very interesting and concise resource for SaaS vendors as well as buyers.
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Google Terminates Six Services
January
An article originally posted on Information Week
“The ax fell on Wednesday at Google (NSDQ: GOOG), not just for some of the company’s employees but for six of its services, too.
In addition to Google’s announcements about the elimination of 100 recruiting positions and the shutdown of offices in Austin, Texas; Trondheim, Norway; and Lulea, Sweden, the company said it would close Dodgeball, Google Catalog Search, Google Mashup Editor, Google Notebook, and Jaiku. It also said it’s discontinuing the ability to upload videos to Google Video.”
Read the full article at www.informationweek.com
In my opinion…
It’s always sad when good services come to an end. At least Google tries to mitigate the negative effects. Sometimes we forget the risk associated with externally hosted services, especially free ones that provide no guarantees. That doesn’t mean commercial services are always reliable either, some of us might remember the “TheLinkup” huge data loss no so long ago …
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Is SaaS Cheaper Than Licensed Software?
November
An article originally posted on Read/WriteWeb
“It would take over 4 and a half years before the licensed software became cheaper. By that time, I’m quite sure there would be another solution that could replace SharePoint, and the cycle would start again. We can quibble about the numbers, but you get the point. Plus, the numbers don’t reflect that the SaaS solution is likely to improve and innovate faster than the licensed software by a significant amount.”
Read the full article at www.readwriteweb.com
In my opinion…
When considering to run new software there is more than the licensing cost to consider. Jason points very well that a software you buy will probably be outdated before it starts to be cheaper than an online solution and that usualy SaaS software improve quicker than traditional software. Always good to keep in mind.
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Gartner Identifies Four Disruptions That Will Transform the Software Industry
October
An article originally posted on Gartner
“Emerging software solutions will transform the software industry and the way software is used over time, according to Gartner, Inc. Software solutions are changing to be user-centric, Web-centric, service-oriented and utilized through new delivery models (such as cloud and software as a service). While this massive amount of change will not be delivered at once, it will cause significant disruptions to the industry.”
Read the full article at www.gartner.com
In my opinion…
Interesting analysis of Gartner concerning the evolution in the Software industry especially the disruptior #2 about the evolution to user-specific needs software and disruptior #3 about the intensification of Web platforms, SaaS and other utility services.
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Who Are The Biggest Users of Amazon Web Services?
April
An article originally posted on TechCrunch
“So who are using these services? A high-ranking Amazon executive told me there are 60,000 different customers across the various Amazon Web Services, and most of them are not the startups that are normally associated with on-demand computing. Rather the biggest customers in both number and amount of computing resources consumed are divisions of banks, pharmaceuticals companies and other large corporations who try AWS once for a temporary project, and then get hooked.” Read the full article at www.techcrunch.com
In my opinion…
It is really interesting to see this move happening. Sensitive information is probably anonymised before its uploaded onto the Amazon services, but still it probably has caused a big stretch in the Security and Legal departments of these large corporations.
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