Software as a service (SaaS) solutions, for areas such as e-mail and customer relationship management (CRM), will be one strand of managed services that will flourish over the next year to 18 months. That is according to Declan Kavanagh, CEO of Sogeti Ireland, one of several experts to whom ComputerScope spoke who used SaaS as a buzz-word for the future of outsourcing and managed services.
“Over time, the traditional software license model will decline, being replaced by hosted solutions and usage payments,” said Kavanagh. “Most major software vendors are working on these types of solutions; many have their software used in shared service centres, so it’s a small step to upgrade to the model.”
Kavanagh also said that another area of development will be “managed software testing services”, both in terms of “execution and test automation development”, as well as “STaaS, or software testing as a service to give it its full title.”
DEVELOP OVER TIME
Neil Wisdom, sale and marketing director with Complete Telecom added to Kavanagh’s SaaS point, saying that “E-mail systems are becoming an ever more critical business application and continue to be a headache and significant cost to manage and administer.
He continued, “Many companies now offer affordable outsourced e-mail solutions on a per user or per mail box basis with resilient servers, telecoms links, power and storage solutions ‘in the cloud’, effectively negating any associated internal company hardware, software or admin cost and replacing it with a fixed charge that you can budget against.
“This model,” he added, “will develop far more over time with more and more mainstream business applications appearing as a virtual installation per organisation allowing them to pay on a per user basis rather than having to worry about building and maintaining their own in house solutions.”
Wisdom also noted that the next year to two years may see “outsourced perimeter security (firewalls, intrusion prevention systems, content and web filtering et cetera) becoming more mainstream” with providers offering proactive systems upgrades, monitoring and policy maintenance.
INFRASTRUCTURE AS A SERVICE
With regards to SaaS, Vincent Byrne of Byrne Dixon Associates, who offer a complete data centre design service, ranging from room layout analysis to electrical and mechanical design, somewhat refuted the ideas of Wisdom and Kavanagh, when he claimed that “while SaaS has made some headway, I believe it has a long way to go”, adding that “cloud computing is definitely underutilised in Ireland”, a situation that he says should be addressed.
He continued, “We see IaaS (Infrastructure as a service) as a huge step in the right direction, this can offer in effect a virtual data centre which brings so many economies of scale not least of which is the increased efficiency of the complete data centre process.”
Putting his weight behind the possibilities of cloud computing as an outsourced service capable of further growth in the coming years, Magnet’s senior product manager, Joe Lavin said that companies which can host your complete desktop (including word processor applications and spread sheets) in the ‘cloud’ are “enabling customers to benefit from centralised management including resilient backup solutions without the investment in server hardware and the IT staff to manage them; and as they are already designed for remote access they don’t require investment in security infrastructure normally required to enable remote working.”
VIRTUALISATION
Helga Muir, sales and marketing manager with Servecentric said that, in her opinion, the next year to 18 months will see “the virtualisation juggernaut” continue marching onwards in the managed services sector. Adding that this will see “private and hybrid cloud services prevailing”, she continued, “without doubt this is the next step for companies that want to keep control of their platforms but have the capacity to easily expand the platform for peaks, surges and growth. We see this in core business applications, payroll and other applications where access is needed by a geographically dispersed organisation.”
The topic of virtualisation is also touched upon by Dan King, who is Digiweb’s hosting and managed services manager, who pointed towards growth in relation to disaster recovery through virtualisation in particular. “Sure, for one thing, being able to outsource entire desktop management will gain a bit more traction in the coming two years but we think the other thing that virtualisation will enable us to outsource for various people will be disaster recovery at a hugely, hugely cheaper rate than before.”
“If you look at the cost you would be quoted from various companies a few years back, compared to now and through utilising virtualisation – clients get a far better deal and that’s what people want these days. Cost is a massive factor in driving anyone towards outsourcing and utilising managed services. Areas that will save companies money – they’re the ones that can’t fail to grow, it’s not rocket science.”
Meanwhile, mentioned by more than a few experts as an area to watch with great interest, the development of IP telephony as a service “is certainly one area where a lot of companies can now make significant savings”, as Magnet’s Lavin put it. “At the moment,” he said, “it’s all about savings. There is also a greater focus on virtual desktops where you can access your files from a laptop, smart phone or even internet caf
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