#SaaS in Cloud Computing

[xonierstech]

One technology that has revolutionized the way software is delivered and accessed is Software as a Service in Cloud Computing. This model has transformed the traditional software deployment approach, offering numerous benefits to organizations of all sizes. Let’s delve into what SaaS in Cloud Computing entails and explore its impact on businesses.

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Cloudburst

Enshittification isn’t inevitable: under different conditions and constraints, the old, good internet could have given way to a new, good internet. Enshittification is the result of specific policy choices: encouraging monopolies; enabling high-speed, digital shell games; and blocking interoperability.

First we allowed companies to buy up their competitors. Google is the shining example here: having made one good product (search), they then fielded an essentially unbroken string of in-house flops, but it didn’t matter, because they were able to buy their way to glory: video, mobile, ad-tech, server management, docs, navigation…They’re not Willy Wonka’s idea factory, they’re Rich Uncle Pennybags, making up for their lack of invention by buying out everyone else:

https://locusmag.com/2022/03/cory-doctorow-vertically-challenged/

But this acquisition-fueled growth isn’t unique to tech. Every administration since Reagan (but not Biden! more on this later) has chipped away at antitrust enforcement, so that every sector has undergone an orgy of mergers, from athletic shoes to sea freight, eyeglasses to pro wrestling:

https://www.whitehouse.gov/cea/written-materials/2021/07/09/the-importance-of-competition-for-the-american-economy/

But tech is different, because digital is flexible in a way that analog can never be. Tech companies can “twiddle” the back-ends of their clouds to change the rules of the business from moment to moment, in a high-speed shell-game that can make it impossible to know what kind of deal you’re getting:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/02/27/knob-jockeys/#bros-be-twiddlin

To make things worse, users are banned from twiddling. The thicket of rules we call IP ensure that twiddling is only done against users, never for them. Reverse-engineering, scraping, bots — these can all be blocked with legal threats and suits and even criminal sanctions, even if they’re being done for legitimate purposes:

https://locusmag.com/2020/09/cory-doctorow-ip/

Enhittification isn’t inevitable but if we let companies buy all their competitors, if we let them twiddle us with every hour that God sends, if we make it illegal to twiddle back in self-defense, we will get twiddled to death. When a company can operate without the discipline of competition, nor of privacy law, nor of labor law, nor of fair trading law, with the US government standing by to punish any rival who alters the logic of their service, then enshittification is the utterly foreseeable outcome.

To understand how our technology gets distorted by these policy choices, consider “The Cloud.” Once, “the cloud” was just a white-board glyph, a way to show that some part of a software’s logic would touch some commodified, fungible, interchangeable appendage of the internet. Today, “The Cloud” is a flashing warning sign, the harbinger of enshittification.

When your image-editing tools live on your computer, your files are yours. But once Adobe moves your software to The Cloud, your critical, labor-intensive, unrecreatable images are purely contingent. At at time, without notice, Adobe can twiddle the back end and literally steal the colors out of your own files:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/10/28/fade-to-black/#trust-the-process

The finance sector loves The Cloud. Add “The Cloud” to a product and profits (money you get for selling something) can turn into rents (money you get for owning something). Profits can be eroded by competition, but rents are evergreen:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/07/24/rent-to-pwn/#kitt-is-a-demon

No wonder The Cloud has seeped into every corner of our lives. Remember your first iPod? Adding music to it was trivial: double click any music file to import it into iTunes, then plug in your iPod and presto, synched! Today, even sophisticated technology users struggle to “side load” files onto their mobile devices. Instead, the mobile duopoly — Apple and Google, who bought their way to mobile glory and have converged on the same rent-seeking business practices, down to the percentages they charge — want you to get your files from The Cloud, via their apps. This isn’t for technological reasons, it’s a business imperative: 30% of every transaction that involves an app gets creamed off by either Apple or Google in pure rents:

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/doctorow/red-team-blues-another-audiobook-that-amazon-wont-sell/posts/3788112

And yet, The Cloud is undeniably useful. Having your files synch across multiple devices, including your collaborators’ devices, with built-in tools for resolving conflicting changes, is amazing. Indeed, this feat is the holy grail of networked tools, because it’s how programmers write all the software we use, including software in The Cloud.

If you want to know how good a tool can be, just look at the tools that toolsmiths use. With “source control” — the software programmers use to collaboratively write software — we get a very different vision of how The Cloud could operate. Indeed, modern source control doesn’t use The Cloud at all. Programmers’ workflow doesn’t break if they can’t access the internet, and if the company that provides their source control servers goes away, it’s simplicity itself to move onto another server provider.

This isn’t The Cloud, it’s just “the cloud” — that whiteboard glyph from the days of the old, good internet — freely interchangeable, eminently fungible, disposable and replaceable. For a tool like git, Github is just one possible synchronization point among many, all of which have a workflow whereby programmers’ computers automatically make local copies of all relevant data and periodically lob it back up to one or more servers, resolving conflicting edits through a process that is also largely automated.

There’s a name for this model: it’s called “Local First” computing, which is computing that starts from the presumption that the user and their device is the most important element of the system. Networked servers are dumb pipes and dumb storage, a nice-to-have that fails gracefully when it’s not available.

The data structures of source-code are among the most complicated formats we have; if we can do this for code, we can do it for spreadsheets, word-processing files, slide-decks, even edit-decision-lists for video and audio projects. If local-first computing can work for programmers writing code, it can work for the programs those programmers write.

Local-first computing is experiencing a renaissance. Writing for Wired, Gregory Barber traces the history of the movement, starting with the French computer scientist Marc Shapiro, who helped develop the theory of “Conflict-Free Replicated Data” — a way to synchronize data after multiple people edit it — two decades ago:

https://www.wired.com/story/the-cloud-is-a-prison-can-the-local-first-software-movement-set-us-free/

Shapiro and his co-author Nuno Preguiça envisioned CFRD as the building block of a new generation of P2P collaboration tools that weren’t exactly serverless, but which also didn’t rely on servers as the lynchpin of their operation. They published a technical paper that, while exiting, was largely drowned out by the release of GoogleDocs (based on technology built by a company that Google bought, not something Google made in-house).

Shapiro and Preguiça’s work got fresh interest with the 2019 publication of “Local-First Software: You Own Your Data, in spite of the Cloud,” a viral whitepaper-cum-manifesto from a quartet of computer scientists associated with Cambridge University and Ink and Switch, a self-described “industrial research lab”:

https://www.inkandswitch.com/local-first/static/local-first.pdf

The paper describes how its authors — Martin Kleppmann, Adam Wiggins, Peter van Hardenberg and Mark McGranaghan — prototyped and tested a bunch of simple local-first collaboration tools built on CFRD algorithms, with the goal of “network optional…seamless collaboration.” The results are impressive, if nascent. Conflicting edits were simpler to resolve than the authors anticipated, and users found URLs to be a good, intuitive way of sharing documents. The biggest hurdles are relatively minor, like managing large amounts of change-data associated with shared files.

Just as importantly, the paper makes the case for why you’d want to switch to local-first computing. The Cloud is not reliable. Companies like Evernote don’t last forever — they can disappear in an eyeblink, and take your data with them:

https://www.theverge.com/2023/7/9/23789012/evernote-layoff-us-staff-bending-spoons-note-taking-app

Google isn’t likely to disappear any time soon, but Google is a graduate of the Darth Vader MBA program (“I have altered the deal, pray I don’t alter it any further”) and notorious for shuttering its products, even beloved ones like Google Reader:

https://www.theverge.com/23778253/google-reader-death-2013-rss-social

And while the authors don’t mention it, Google is also prone to simply kicking people off all its services, costing them their phone numbers, email addresses, photos, document archives and more:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/08/22/allopathic-risk/#snitches-get-stitches

There is enormous enthusiasm among developers for local-first application design, which is only natural. After all, companies that use The Cloud go to great lengths to make it just “the cloud,” using containerization to simplify hopping from one cloud provider to another in a bid to stave off lock-in from their cloud providers and the enshittification that inevitably follows.

The nimbleness of containerization acts as a disciplining force on cloud providers when they deal with their business customers: disciplined by the threat of losing money, cloud companies are incentivized to treat those customers better. The companies we deal with as end-users know exactly how bad it gets when a tech company can impose high switching costs on you and then turn the screws until things are almost-but-not-quite so bad that you bolt for the doors. They devote fantastic effort to making sure that never happens to them — and that they can always do that to you.

Interoperability — the ability to leave one service for another — is technology’s secret weapon, the thing that ensures that users can turn The Cloud into “the cloud,” a humble whiteboard glyph that you can erase and redraw whenever it suits you. It’s the greatest hedge we have against enshittification, so small wonder that Big Tech has spent decades using interop to clobber their competitors, and lobbying to make it illegal to use interop against them:

https://locusmag.com/2019/01/cory-doctorow-disruption-for-thee-but-not-for-me/

Getting interop back is a hard slog, but it’s also our best shot at creating a new, good internet that lives up the promise of the old, good internet. In my next book, The Internet Con: How to Seize the Means of Computation (Verso Books, Sept 5), I set out a program fro disenshittifying the internet:

https://www.versobooks.com/products/3035-the-internet-con

The book is up for pre-order on Kickstarter now, along with an independent, DRM-free audiobooks (DRM-free media is the content-layer equivalent of containerized services — you can move them into or out of any app you want):

http://seizethemeansofcomputation.org

Meanwhile, Lina Khan, the FTC and the DoJ Antitrust Division are taking steps to halt the economic side of enshittification, publishing new merger guidelines that will ban the kind of anticompetitive merger that let Big Tech buy its way to glory:

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2023/07/biden-administration-corporate-merger-antitrust-guidelines/674779/

The internet doesn’t have to be enshittified, and it’s not too late to disenshittify it. Indeed — the same forces that enshittified the internet — monopoly mergers, a privacy and labor free-for-all, prohibitions on user-side twiddling — have enshittified everything from cars to powered wheelchairs. Not only should we fight enshittification — we must.

Back my anti-enshittification Kickstarter here!

If you’d like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here’s a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad- free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/08/03/there-is-no-cloud/#only-other-peoples-computers

Image: Drahtlos (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Motherboard_Intel_386.jpg

CC BY-SA 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/deed.en

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CC BY-SA 2.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/deed.en

[techmarts]

SaaS: The bright spot for India's tech businesses amid market slump

SaaS: The bright spot for India’s tech businesses amid market slump

For India, nothing in the tech verse is as exciting as SaaS. Indian SaaS players are growing in confidence when it comes to the outlook of the banking sector on the digitization trend in the post-pandemic world. According to a report by Bessemer Venture Partners, software-as-a-service in India is estimated to be worth $50 billion by 2030. The report also states that the market has now reached an…

[proteustechnologies]

What should I look for in an ERP solution

Everyone says that they have an ERP solution at a wide range of price points. How do I choose one for my SME

Longevity

Check if the ERP solution would meet your requirement 5 years from now when you grow say 5X, add new manufacturing locations, add different lines of business. ERPs not only need to address the growth volume of your business but need to adapt to the business process changes required as you grow.

How easy it is to use

Can your average user learn and adapt easily, this is more relevant for SME organizations trying to embrace ERPs , as they are not in a position to employ specially trained skills for ERP implementation or operations. Your cloud ERP should be intuitive to use and as simple and easy as an e-commerce website. Make sure that the user experience is simple and follows the typical standards of any web application.

A SaaS model helps

A SaaS based ERP allows you to start with very low opex costs and minimal investment. Your opex increases as your business grows and you have a more rational approach towards investment in technology.

What about open source

One major advantage of open source solutions is that there is no license cost to acquire it. Other than that, open source solutions really don't provide any additional benefits to the end customer, most of whom would like to concentrate on their business, rather than trying to change or modify the source code. Secondly since it is open source, support and feature enhancements are driven by the community and the community should be as eager as you to add a feature .

Check the total cost of ownership of open source solutions.

1.Requirement understanding costs

2.License costs

3.Hosting or cloud costs and all the licenses required to run the open source

4.Support costs

5.Cost and reliability of making changes in the solution

The connected EcoSystem

Organizations need to leverage on the connected ecosystem. Does your ERP provide open and easy connectivity to marketplaces, statutory bodies, vendor and customer systems, banks and financial intermediaries. Does it have the capability to provide APIs for easy and quick integration and implementation.

What about AI in ERP?

A number of ERP vendors have started incorporating AI in their ERP solutions, and most of them are Cloud ERP providers. It is impossible to incorporate the infrastructure required for AI on an stand alone ERP system, the costs become prohibitive. Cloud ERPs can build AI capabilities leveraging the cloud infrastructure and share the same infrastructure with all the users.

There are already a number of use cases where AI can be used in an ERP, for instance read unstructured documents / emails using AI and convert them to Sales orders, Expenses, GRN in the ERP. Flag transactions which seem irregular by nature, detect fraud or suspicious transaction, increase planning accuracy using AI, continuous auditing, realtime evaluation of your business partners and Ai driven business analytics and Insights

To conclude

Though most ERP vendors will try and match your requirement document either "out of the box" or by so called "minor" customisation, you need to look beyond the current requirements and ensure that your ERP vendor has a track record of adapting and leveraging trends in technology so that you will be able to stay ahead in the future.

Visit Our Site To Know More :-https://proteustech.in/

[internett1line]

What is XaaS? The Future of Business Services in the Cloud

The evolution of cloud computing has given rise to a new paradigm in how businesses consume and deliver services. XaaS, or Anything as a Service, refers to the broad category of cloud-based services that deliver various IT resources and functionalities via the internet. This model allows businesses to adopt, scale, and manage services more efficiently and cost-effectively, replacing the need for…

[fuerst-von-plan1]

Cloud-Computing in der Finanzbranche: Schlüsseltechnologien und Trends

Die Finanzbranche befindet sich im Wandel, der durch technologische Innovationen und digitale Transformation geprägt ist. Cloud-Computing spielt eine entscheidende Rolle in dieser Entwicklung, indem es Finanzinstitutionen ermöglicht, ihre Dienstleistungen effizienter und flexibler zu gestalten. In diesem Artikel werden die Schlüsseltechnologien des Cloud-Computing im Finanzsektor sowie aktuelle…

[ifitechsolu1pg2]

Azure Services: The Complete Guide - Part 4 | IFI Techsolutions

Microsoft Azure Services: The Complete Guide - Part 4 In this article, we will discuss Azure SaaS services. SaaS allows your organization to get quickly up and running with an app at minimal upfront cost.

[mariasuzie23]

Invicktus offers cloud computing services to businesses through its cloud platform, which enables organisations to access computing resources and services by the internet.

[infographiczzz]

Explore how serverless architecture is transforming cloud-based application development. This infographic highlights the benefits of serverless computing, such as increased scalability, cost efficiency, and faster time-to-market. Discover key challenges, solutions, and real-world applications across various industries. Learn how developers can focus on code and innovation while cloud providers manage the infrastructure.

[xonierstech]

Exploring the Advantages and Disadvantages of SaaS in Cloud Computing

The adoption of SaaS in cloud computing has significantly impacted businesses, enabling greater flexibility, agility, and cost savings. However, organizations must carefully weigh the advantages and disadvantages before transitioning to a SaaS-based model to ensure it aligns with their specific requirements and objectives.

Visit us : https://xoniertechnologies.com/blog/saas-in-cloud-computing/

[poojalate]

How Leading Companies Are Leveraging Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS)

As businesses increasingly turn to digital solutions, Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) has emerged as a vital component for modern enterprises. By utilizing cloud platforms, companies can enhance their agility, scalability, and cost-efficiency. This article explores infrastructure as a service examples and how leading companies are leveraging IaaS providers to drive innovation and growth.

What is Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS)?

IaaS is a cloud computing service model that delivers virtualized computing resources over the internet. It enables businesses to rent infrastructure components like servers, storage, and networking, rather than investing in physical hardware. This flexibility allows companies to scale resources according to their needs and focus on core activities without the burden of managing IT infrastructure.

1. Netflix: Enhancing Scalability and Performance

Cloud Infrastructure Examples

Netflix, the global streaming giant, leverages IaaS to manage its vast content library and ensure seamless streaming experiences for millions of users worldwide. By using IaaS providers like Amazon Web Services (AWS), Netflix can quickly scale its infrastructure to handle peak loads, such as new releases or seasonal spikes in viewership. This scalability ensures high performance and availability, crucial for maintaining customer satisfaction.

2. Airbnb: Optimizing Resource Management

IaaS Use Cases

Airbnb, the popular online marketplace for lodging, utilizes IaaS to manage its global operations. The company employs cloud services examples like dynamic scaling to match infrastructure resources with fluctuating demand. During peak travel seasons or significant events, Airbnb can scale up its infrastructure to accommodate increased traffic, ensuring reliable service and user experience.

3. Slack: Ensuring Data Security and Compliance

Cloud Platforms

Slack, a leading collaboration platform, relies on IaaS for data security and regulatory compliance. By partnering with IaaS providers like Google Cloud Platform (GCP), Slack benefits from advanced security features, including encryption and compliance with industry standards such as GDPR and HIPAA. This ensures that sensitive business communications remain secure and compliant with regulations.

4. Pinterest: Enhancing Development and Innovation

IaaS Providers

Pinterest, a visual discovery and bookmarking platform, leverages IaaS to accelerate development cycles and foster innovation. Using cloud platforms like Microsoft Azure, Pinterest provides its developers with the tools and resources needed to build, test, and deploy new features rapidly. This agile development environment supports continuous improvement and innovation.

5. Spotify: Delivering Seamless Music Streaming

Cloud Infrastructure Examples

Spotify, the music streaming service, utilizes IaaS to manage its extensive music catalog and deliver high-quality streaming experiences. By using cloud platforms like Google Cloud, Spotify ensures that users can access their favorite music anytime, anywhere. The scalable infrastructure allows Spotify to handle millions of concurrent users without compromising performance.

6. Coca-Cola: Supporting Global Operations

IaaS Use Cases

Coca-Cola, a global beverage leader, uses IaaS to support its worldwide operations. By partnering with IaaS providers like IBM Cloud, Coca-Cola manages its supply chain, customer data, and digital marketing initiatives across different regions. This integrated approach enables Coca-Cola to maintain consistency and efficiency in its global operations.

7. Twitter: Managing Real-Time Data

Cloud Services Examples

Twitter, the social media platform, leverages IaaS to manage and process vast amounts of real-time data. Using cloud platforms like AWS, Twitter can handle high volumes of tweets, mentions, and user interactions with minimal latency. This capability is crucial for delivering real-time updates and maintaining user engagement.

8. General Electric: Facilitating Industrial IoT

IaaS Providers

General Electric (GE) uses IaaS to power its Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) initiatives. By utilizing cloud platforms like Microsoft Azure, GE connects industrial equipment and collects data to optimize performance and predict maintenance needs. This data-driven approach enhances operational efficiency and reduces downtime.

9. eBay: Ensuring High Availability

Cloud Infrastructure Examples

eBay, the e-commerce giant, employs IaaS to ensure high availability and reliability for its global marketplace. By using IaaS providers like AWS, eBay can quickly scale its infrastructure to handle large volumes of transactions and user interactions. This reliability is essential for maintaining trust and satisfaction among buyers and sellers.

10. Zoom: Supporting Remote Communication

IaaS Use Cases

Zoom, the video conferencing service, relies on IaaS to support its global user base. By leveraging cloud platforms like Oracle Cloud, Zoom ensures high-quality video and audio communication, even during peak usage times. This scalability and reliability are critical for supporting remote work and virtual events.

Conclusion

Leading companies across various industries are leveraging Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) to enhance scalability, performance, security, and innovation. By partnering with top IaaS providers and utilizing cloud infrastructure services, these businesses can stay agile, competitive, and responsive to market demands. Whether it's optimizing resource management, ensuring data security, or supporting global operations, IaaS provides the flexibility and power needed to drive business success in the digital age.

[saasproductreviewsworld]

Why SaaS Reviews Are Crucial

If you’re running a SaaS business, then a review website should be a crucial part of your SaaS marketing strategy.

Online reviews are critical. If you find yourself neglecting this fact, just remember that around 93% of consumers claim that reviews they found on the internet influenced their decision to buy something. It’s also interesting to note that over 90% of consumers aged 18-34 say that they trust online reviews just as much as personal recommendations. These numbers show that online reviews are essential for a SaaS product.

[lauriejmccabe]

Inside Zoho's Zoholics 2024 Event: Key Takeaways and Insights

Zoho held its Zoholics 2024 customer conference last week in beautiful downtown Austin TX. In typical Zoho style, the vendor offered customers, analysts, and press a stellar experience in style and substance, with informative presentations, 1-1 meetings, and plenty of time to socialize. Zoho used its Backstage events solution to bring remote attendees in to join those of us who attended live.…

[buzzclan]

Exploring the Spectrum: Types of Cloud Computing

Discover the diverse landscape of cloud computing with this comprehensive guide. From public clouds offering scalability and cost efficiency to private clouds providing enhanced security and control, delve into the nuances of Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS), Platform as a Service (PaaS), and Software as a Service (SaaS). Unravel the complexities of hybrid clouds bridging the gap between on-premises infrastructure and cloud environments, empowering businesses to tailor solutions to their unique needs. Explore the benefits and considerations of each cloud model to navigate the ever-evolving realm of digital transformation effectively.

[gleecus-techlabs-blogs]

SaaS model is an innovative cloud technology solution for young and inexperienced customers to lower operational, administrative, and lead generation costs compared to traditional software development. SaaS offers businesses a great platform to improve scalability, amplify security, shorten release cycles, drive flexibility, and enable embedded data management.