Comments on: What’s in a SaaS Version Release, Anyway?

By: Stuart McLean

Stuart McLean — Sun, 26 Apr 2009 21:19:37 +0000

I can tell you one thing for sure – SaaS release and upgrades are infinitely easier than conventional installed software.

My advice would be to
1) release often
2) make sure you have a really good set of automated tests as you can
3) automate the entire release process – in many of the enterprise environments I’ve worked in there was absolutely no direct access allowed to the servers – everything scripted
4) make sure you have a test environment that exactly replicates production – and I stress exactly. This can often be achieved these days by virtualisation.

By: Michael Dunham

Michael Dunham — Mon, 22 Dec 2008 20:35:27 +0000

The integration question posed by Charlie is indeed a question of increasing importance and complexity. It runs in multiple directions too – are your customers embedding your SaaS solution in other SaaS offerings? Is there integration at the platform level? Perhaps across a suite of offerings (as is happening more and more with SalesForce adopters and Google-based apps)? With local apps and databases?

There is no question that SaaS apps will eventually go through the same integration hurdles that enterprise applications faced years ago. Hopefully the developers will see the “opportunity” before it slows them down.

By: Charlie

Charlie — Mon, 22 Dec 2008 19:07:22 +0000

One other area that adds a whole other level of complexity is the integration of your SaaS with the clients business. What level of integration are you going to support? Will your SLA committments need to change in order to support that degree of coupling?
If you don’t really allow any integration support are you just a commodity waiting for someone else to deliver the higher business value.