An Introduction to

SaaS and Cloud Computing

Ross Cooney
 The challenge

Add new services for your users quickly

and cost effectively
 Expand your
Infrastructure!
Buy new servers,
increase your
software costs,
provision more
datacenter capacity!!
 Look to the cloud!
Pay for the bandwidth
and server resources
that you need. When
your push is done
then turn the whole
thing off!
 What is the cloud?

• IT as a service

• What is
Cloud allows access to services without user technical knowledge or control of
supporting infrastructure

• Cloud Computing?
Best described in terms of what happened to mechanical power over 100 yrs ago

• Now computers are simple devices connected to the larger cloud

• Data processing, storage and software applications that used to run locally are now being
supplied by big central computing stations. They're becoming, in essence, computing
utilities.
The hype

Cluster Computing
Cloud Computing
Grid Computing 
 SaaS
Software as a Service

PaaS
Platform as a Service

IaaS
Infrastructure as a Service
 SaaS
Software as a Service
SaaS Software delivery model

• Increasingly popular with

SMEs
• No hardware or software to
manage
• Service delivered through a
browser
SaaS Advantages
• Pay per use
• Instant Scalability
• Security
• Reliability
• APIs
SaaS Examples
• CRM
• Financial Planning
• Human Resources
• Word processing
Commercial Services:
• Salesforce.com
• emailcloud
 PaaS
Platform as a Service
 Platform delivery model

• Platforms are built upon

PaaS Infrastructure, which is
expensive
• Estimating demand is not a
science!
• Platform management is not
fun!
 Popular services

• Storage
PaaS • Database
• Scalability
 Advantages

• Pay per use

PaaS • Instant Scalability
• Security
• Reliability
• APIs
 Examples

• Google App Engine

PaaS • Mosso
• AWS: S3
 IaaS
Infrastructure as a Service
 Computer infrastructure
delivery model

Access to infrastructure stack:

– Full OS access
– Firewalls
IaaS – Routers
– Load balancing
 Advantages

• Pay per use

• Instant Scalability
• Security
• Reliability
IaaS • APIs
 Examples

• Flexiscale
• AWS: EC2

IaaS
 SaaS
Software as a Service

PaaS
Platform as a Service

IaaS
Infrastructure as a Service
SaaS Common Factors
• Pay per use
PaaS • Instant Scalability
• Security
• Reliability
• APIs
IaaS
SaaS Advantages

• Lower cost of ownership

PaaS • Reduce infrastructure
management responsibility
• Allow for unexpected resource
IaaS loads
• Faster application rollout
SaaS Cloud Economics

• Multi-tenented
PaaS • Virtualisation lowers costs by
increasing utilisation
• Economies of scale afforded
IaaS by technology
• Automated update policy
Examples of usage
 • Your current CRM package is not
SaaS managing the load or you simply don’t
want to host it in-house….use a SaaS
provider such as Salesforce.com

• Your email is hosted on an exchange

server in your office and it is very slow…
outsource this using Hosted Exchange.
 • You need to host a large file (5Mb) on
your website and make it available for
35,000 users for only two months
duration. Use Cloud Front from Amazon.

PaaS • You want to start storage services on

your network for a large number of files
and you do not have the storage
capacity…use Amazon S3.
 • You want to run a batch job but you don’t
have the infrastructure necessary to run it
in a timely manner. Use Amazon EC2.

• You want to host a website, but only for a

few days. Use Flexiscale.

IaaS
 Network Design
• Management Node

• Various scan arrays

• Cloud burst
 Administration (ARACNE)

• Hosted in the Databanx

facility in Newcastle

• Over £250,000 invested

• Redundant hardware
 Our scan arrays
• Each scan array contains
9 servers

• Each array can scan over

1m emails a day at
20% utilisation
 Cloudburst
• New scan array in 5 minutes

• Cost of $0.90 per hour

• Use only when your network needs a

burst of capacity.
 Why Cloud Computing?

• Pay per use

• Instant Scalability
• Security
• Reliability
• APIs