What is cloud-based computing? What is software as a service (SaaS)?

Ans. cloud-based computing means that a type of computing that instead of focus on local servers or personal devices to handle applications, prefers to relies on shared computing resources. Cloud computing is performed outside the organization's firewall that taking service and moving them outside. Through the web, different applications, other services, and storage are accessed. By the cloud customer on an, as needed or pay per use business model, the service is used or delivered through the internet and also paid for it. Cloud computing has many characteristics like measured service, rapid elasticity or expansion, resource pooling, broad network access, and on-demand self-service. It also offers many benefits to customers and organizations according to their needs and requirements. Some basic benefits are; high availability, anytime access, security, low costs, scalability, and convenience. According to the customer's requirement its also use many different models like SaaS, PaaS and IaaS. (Beal, 2019)

Software as a service is a software distribution model in which the provider host as third party offer applications and through internet provides all the customers. SaaS is the main part of cloud computing. On-demand delivery computing software models and application service provider also related to the SaaS. The ASP is just like SaaS according to hosted application management model that provides software to customers and also approved the end-users through the internet. The provider offers customer network-based access to a single copy of an application that the provider creates for the SaaS distribution specifically in the software on-demand SaaS model. When new features and functionalities are rolled out where the application source code is the same for the customers and they also rolled out the customers. (Singleton, 2019)

1.      Why do you believe your company should implement software as a service (SaaS) to solve company needs rather than developing your software or purchasing off the shelf solutions?

Ans. Company has to implement the software as a service to resolve the needs of the company. Because it provides lots of benefits and facilities to the company and makes the company more profitable according to its sales increase. Company has to clearly understand its infrastructure so that the better integration of SaaS gives more benefit to the organization. Professional SaaS service provider supports all the requirements in the most effective way and also develop in the business along with term value that can handle the customer's requirements. The integration of SaaS helps the company to make proper adjustment according to own needs and requirements and also offer many facilities to its customers that make the business more profitable and increase its sales.

 SaaS also determine that what sort of It professional is required to settle the platform of SaaS and manage the company operations and system. Integration of SaaS also must he automated that can bring changes according to company requirement and clients needs. After the implementation of SaaS, the employees must be trained and highly qualified to manage all the basic requirements of the company. The solution of SaaS is implemented in all the processes of the business according to company size and its structure, it also offers many choices to the company according to its targets. They are priced on a subscription model instead of a perpetual license, it not required any hardware specifically, many IT responsibilities also fall in the vendor of SaaS, hosting is main and centralized in the business and it offers web-based application according to customer's convenience. (vmokshagroup.com, 2019)

2.      What benefit do SaaS solutions provide to businesses like your company and office depot?

Ans. software as a service provider is the most commonly used software as compared to the traditional installation of standard software in the environment of business. in this software the company never pay off the software rather they rental the software and get required benefits. They have legally authorized for the usage of the software on that period which is specified according to company need. So there are many benefits that SaaS has and enjoy the company who integrate the SaaS in its infrastructure. Benefits of the SaaS include easy to use and proof of concepts perform, new upgrades, integration and scalability, lower costs, reduced time to benefit, multitenant architecture, get better access at global level, and cross-device compatibility.

Easy to use and proof concepts perform means that SaaS offers easy to use the facility to its users with the sample inside and best practice. Customers can test the software and also give proof of concepts with the new features of the software.

Integrations and scalability mean that in a cloud environment the solutions reside as they have integration with others and also scalable. They utilize the server capacity planning to manage all the integration.

New upgrades mean that SaaS provides latest and updated solutions and easily available to its all customers. Costs and efforts according to upgrading are less as compare to traditional methods.

Lower cost means that in the shared environment the software and hardware cost very economical.

Reduce time to benefit means that is provided quickly and configured with the installation and also provide a solution in fewer periods.

3.      Provide four lists of alternative cloud-based integration platform service providers which offer cloud-based solutions to small medium-sized businesses.

Ans. many excellent software tools are present in the market place for the best integration platform as a service solution. These different software’s offer different budgets, deployment methods, verticals and cases according to business requirement. The iPaaS model incorporated with the self-service and EAI data preparation products by its nature.  These different services can connect the data source and also operate in the cloud. Such type of market gets prominent in 2015 and consider a new and determine its strong position in the market place. As opposed to providing a large number of granular options, the solutions are more focus on quickly connecting systems in general terms. There are also many platforms related to integration and also offer cloud services to different users according to their features and requirement of customers. Four main platforms offer high-quality service to users and also offer many facilities to different companies according to their custom-built requirements. These four are action, dell Boomi, Sligo and Informatica.

Action is the tool of data management that offer automated actions through the different operation of the business. Action data connect integrates with the support of big data and handle a wide range of sources op-premises and data volume in the hybrid environment or cloud.

Dell Boomi atmosphere integration platform provides a large number of process of integration between on-premises systems, SaaS applications and cloud platforms. To configure application integrations with the data mapping and drag and drop feature it utilizes the visual interface.

Celigo integration platform is an effective tool of integration platform as a service that offer business users a set of wizards that develop the flow of data between different systems in the company.

For prototype and operationalize the data the Informatica data integration platform provides a tool for development and without of the box purpose-built connectors, it simplifies and accelerates integration. (King, 2019)

4.      Do a comparative analysis among them in term of cost and features.

Ans.  The action integration platform is the best tool for integrated data management according to the company's requirement. It is a major supporter of big data and can handle a large number of data or a huge volume of data through different sources and can handle data integration in any kind of environment. In real-time or through the batch process, the visual interface tool designed that also offer disparate data integration. Its features are enterprise-grade functionality that easily handles by the business user and its cost are very economical for the business point of view. 

Dell Boomi is the platform that uses visual interface for the application integration and also uses different features like data mapping and drag and drop. Boomi atom has a runtime engine that offers integration facility for the implementation according to cloud requirement. Boomi platform directly handles all the data integration processes.

Celigo integration platform is allowing subscription service and also buy in the enterprise, premium and standard rates. To cloud application through smart connector, it's not technical users use data loader to upload the data. It requires sales force, smart connector integration between the net suite and no coding with many other applications.

Informatica data integration platform increases productivity and also offer an open-source platform through innovation without the reusability and sacrificing maintainability. Its cost is manageable for the companies according to their wide range and their revenue generation capacity.

5.      Which provider do you think is best suited to your business needs, and provide reasons why? Justify with cost-benefit analysis.

Ans.  Our company also wants to increase its sales and handle all the revenue generated issues that consider as hurdles in the development of the company. The company wants to develop such system that can handle its sales with the innovative technology and for fulfilling the integration requirement of business it is very much beneficial to implement the SaaS to handle the business issues most effectively. But major problem is that company want to implement the SaaS most cost-effectively because due to less revenue the company has not enough cost so it tries to implement such integration platform that can be easily affordable and also give lots of benefits to the company and also handle their all problems.

 Here we discuss different integration platforms like action, dell Boomi, Sligo and Informatica and many others. These all have very beneficial and also give lots of benefits to the business because all are include such features that can be resolve the issue of the company. Cost-benefit analysis taken by the company of all these platforms and determine which is the best platforms that can be affordable by the company so the platform Sligo of integration is the most cost-effective platform that can manage the company and its offer all the services and facilities that required by the company and can offer best features to maximum facilitate the company. Currently, an owner of company has more work than he can cope with, as well as he is outsourcing to other design firms at a cost of $50 an hour. The company outsources an average of 100 hours of work each month. company owner estimates that revenue will increase by 50 percent with increased capacity. Per-person production will increase by 10 percent with more working space (talend.com, 2019) On September 18, 2018, the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative announced that the current U.S. Administration would impose a 10% tariff on approximately $200 billion worth of imports from China into the U.S. effective September 24, 2018, which was expected to increase to 25% starting January 1, 2019 (Delaware, 2019).

6.      In general, which types of problems are best suited for SaaS solutions?

Ans. there are many different problems that company has to face like its poor management in its sale or its non-regular purchase and its poor production sector and many others so for bring innovation in its system the company want to implement the SaaS system in the operation of business to get all the transactions updated and also maintain high level of efficiency and improve the performance of the company. SaaS makes sense of the manager of a business that follows all the latest capabilities without the issue of business future needs and also lowers the cost. There is some issue that can be beneficial the usage of SaaS of the company and also helpful in the development of the organization. These problems are a collaboration, flexibility for business and users, reduce application cost and latest features. collaboration means that in the business many people want to work collectively but they can't so the SaaS offer this facility and under the same software suite the people of the business can work together and they can work on the same document at the same time. It offers flexibility to the business and users in such a way that it offers such strategies, business models and cultures that create competitive advantages of the company. Its added users, system up-gradation, added features and new application increase the flexibility of the business. User can get all the features and handle its data integration without any problems. It also reduces the application cost by offer most economical software application and makes the system of the business more effective. It offers all the latest features that can be an offer by the business and get maximum benefits.(apogaeis.com, 2019)

7.      What risk, if any is your company similar to office depot taking by trusting its data and operations to your chosen SaaS provider?

Ans. may security risk may face by the business after the implementation of SaaS integration like availability, the confidentiality of data, virtual machine security, long term viability, disaster recovery, disaster recovery verification, data segregation, data location, regulatory compliance and user access. (Rajegore1, 2016)

Reference:

apogaeis.com, 2019. 4 Ways SaaS (Software-as-a-Service) can Help in Your Business Growth. [Online]
Available at: https://www.apogaeis.com/blog/4-ways-saas-software-as-a-service-can-help-in-your-business-growth/

Beal, V., 2019. cloud computing. [Online]
Available at: https://www.webopedia.com/TERM/C/cloud_computing.html

Delaware, 2019. Office Depot, Inc., s.l.: UNITED STATES.

King, T., 2019. The 10 Best Integration Platform as a Service Tools for 2019 and Beyond. [Online]
Available at: https://solutionsreview.com/data-integration/the-best-integration-platform-as-a-service-tools/

Rajegore1, M. P. B., 2016. Issues & Solution of SAAS Model in Cloud Computing. IOSR Journal of Computer Engineering (IOSR-JCE), pp. 40-44.

Singleton, D., 2019. What is SaaS? 10 FAQs About Software as a Service. [Online]
Available at: https://www.softwareadvice.com/resources/saas-10-faqs-software-service/

talend.com, 2019. iPaaS: What Cloud Integration Platforms Can Do for You. [Online]
Available at: https://www.talend.com/resources/ipaas-cloud-integration-platforms/

vmokshagroup.com, 2019. What to consider while implementing SaaS?. [Online]
Available at: https://vmokshagroup.com/blog/what-to-consider-while-implementing-saas/