SaaS software is much more dependent on being run by the numbers than conventional on-premises software because the expenses are front loaded and the costs are back loaded.  SAP learned this the hard way with its Business By Design product, for example.  If you run the numbers, there is a high degree of correlation between low-cost of delivering the service and high growth rates among public SaaS companies.  It isn’t hard to understand–every dollar spent delivering the service is a dollar that can’t be spent to find new customers or improve the service.

So how do you lower your cost to deliver a SaaS service?

Read the whole article here...

Dell Corporation (Thailand) grasps the opportunity of virtualisation and cloud computing trend to pioneer launch its broad portfolio of Software as a Service (SaaS) applications through cloud-based services.

According to Anothai Wettayakorn, Dell Thailand managing director, technology has transformed from mainframe to mini computer, PC and client server, Internet to today's era of virtualisation and cloud computing where it's no longer an option, but is a must.

Citing Merrill Lynch, Anothai said cloud computing will triple by 2012, with current worldwide spending of around $42 billion, or 25 percent of overall IT spending, increasing to $95 billion in 2015. The growth of cloud computing in Thailand will coincide with the global trend.

A few weeks back there was a NY Times article on South Korea's concept of the Ubiquitous City, where an area called New Songdo would arguably become the most networked place in the world.  Following the crash of the Asian markets a few years back, Seoul made a concerted effort to move from an industrial economy to that of one based on IT.  In this vein, they've created the concept for the Ubiquitous City.  For example, recycling bins could use RFID to credit you with recycling a glass bottle, if you need a birth certificate you could get one printed from a city government kiosk on the sidewalk, there's even talk of pressure sensitive floors to detect a fall in an elderly persons home...  Naturally, storing and processing all this data would be ideally suited for the Cloud and it seems that Korean government feels the same.

To develop their Cloud infrastructure, the government just announced that they will be devoting $172 million dollars over the next year to help the private sector promote, develop and deploy Cloud based systems.   While that might not be considered a lot of money in some circles (especially when it comes to government funding) the fact that the Seoul is putting any money towards this nascent industry is a sign of forward thinking and can only bode well for SaaS vendors worldwide.  Kudos to South Korea for putting its money where its mouth is...

 Read more:

IceWEB, a leading provider of purpose built appliances and building blocks for cloud storage networks, announced today that the Company has entered into a Standard Procurement Agreement (SPA) with ExxonMobil Global Services Company, an operating division of ExxonMobil, the largest publicly traded international oil and gas company. The agreement for upstream services from IceWEB is for both the design of Geographical Information Systems (GIS) and to provide GIS technical staff including Consultants, Project Managers, Senior GIS System/Software Architects, GIS Software Developers, Engineers, Data Base Analysts, and Senior Storage Engineering staff.

John R. Signorello, CEO of IceWEB said, "Land exploration in the oil and gas sector requires the ability to put detailed imagery in the hands of those who need it regardless of where they may be. With this agreement ExxonMobil will leverage IceWEB expertise to work on building new infrastructure to accomplish that task. We are very pleased to be able to make our resources available to ExxonMobil for this important project."

About IceWEB, Inc.

Hosting company NaviSite has partnered with Cisco Systems, IBM, Intel and VMware to deliver NaviSite NaviCloud Managed Cloud Services, which leverages technologies as Cisco’s UCS (Unified Computing System), Intel’s Xeon 5500 Series processors and platform. It also includes IBM’s XIV Storage System open disk storage product.

NaviCloud is an enterprise-level cloud option, much more so than Amazon, with its EC2 environment.

A key difference between the two offerings, is that with an environment like Amazon EC2, users essentially need only a credit card and can jump on and off as desired. However, with NaviCloud, NaviSite is looking for a base commitment from customers of 100GHz and 80GB of RAM, or about 10 Hewlett-Packard 2x dual-socket ProLiant DL380s with 8GB of RAM each, he said.

There have been a lot of these types of articles circling around the web on various blogs etc., this article is informative and eye opening, it left me thinking.....

Here are some highlights:

SaaS Application Power Consumption: