Designing the SaaS Enterprise

What if you are the SaaS?

John Overton

Things to Know Up Front

• Where are you going?

• Is SaaS and feature or a strategy?

• Converting or ground up?

• Financial transactions?

• What are my core competencies?

SaaS Operations Big Five

• Architecture

• OnBoarding

• Monitoring

• Security

• Support

“If designing a SaaS product out of the

gate, the best situation is single instance,

multi-tenant. It is a hard and fast law that

shouldn’t be debated. Any CTO who

thinks otherwise should be fired.

Byron Deeter of Bessemer Venture Partners

Architecture

App Architecture Drives SaaS

Operational Model

• Tenancy model sets course for all other

decisions and costs

• Time to market pressure may force shortcuts

• New SaaS apps can achieve “utopia” upfront

• Resist customer pressure to do one offs

• Build ahead or in parallel multi-tenancy

Architecture Maturity

Taxonomy

• Gianpaolo Carraro, Dharmesh Shah

Level 1- Chaos

• Every time you add a new customer, you add a new instance of the software.

Level 2- Managed Chaos

• Every customer runs

on separate

instances of the

same version of the

software and any

customizations are

done via

configuration.

Level 3 - High Rise

• All customers running

on a single version of

the software, and

they're all running

essentially on one

"instance".

Level 4 – Multi-Tenant High Rise

• All customers in a multi-

tenant, single version of

the software model. But,

you can scale-out (add

buildings at will).

Level 5 – Utopia Multi-Tennant

Custom Suites

• This is like Level 4,

except you've figured

out an efficient way to

run different versions of

the software on the

same instances.

Architecture Realities

• Level 1-2 = feature, level 3+= strategy

• Most converted apps are level 1

• Ground-up SaaS apps should be level 3 or better

• Virtualization can simulate level 2

• Virtualization reduces DR costs and complexities

• PaaS offerings offer limited relief

Architecture Realities

• PaaS offerings offer limited relief

• Mission critical issues with continuity

• Expensive compared to leasing options

• Security compliancy issues

• Perfect for capacity bursts, DR and

Staging

Level I

Hardware

App

Refactoring

Outsourcing

Architecture Best BetsLevel II Level III Level IV

Blade Servers: HP, IBM, Sun

Commodity Servers: Dell,Supermicro

Op Source, 3Tera, BEA,

MindFire

OpSource, Amazon, Oracle, SFDC, 3Tera, Verizon,

Logicworks, Rackspace, IBM, Mosso, Joyent

Onboarding Ranked #1

Onboarding

(First Use)

• OnBoarding measured in hours not days

• Fast turn ups = higher customer sat and

expansion

• Automated provisioning is an art

• Invest and allocate permanent resources

Level I

Applications

Virtualization

Provisioning Best BetsLevel II Level III Level IV

Enigmatic, ControlTier Ant

Virtual Center (VMWare), Ardent, Scalent, ToutVirtual,

Monitoring Challenges • Anonymous users

• Multiple clients

• Global access

• Single User Theory

IT organizations must monitor end-

user experience … to obtain a

comprehensive picture of application

performance”

- Gartner (Nov ’07), “The Four Dimensions of Application Performance Monitoring”

Key Technologies

Effective Web Application Management

Users

Platforms

OperationsMarketing

Synthetic

Testing

Reachability,

baselining,

load testing

Web

Analytics

Conversion,

SEO,

traffic,

campaign ROI

Platform MgmtDevices, functions,

agents, databases

End-User

Experience

Management

• Full Visibility starts with

the End-User Experience

• Automated Incident

Detection

• Granular Service Level

Management

• Detection, Root-cause &

Remedy

• Optimize Capacity

Level I

End Users

Synthetic

Platform/

Virtualization

Monitoring Best BetsLevel II Level III Level IV

Coradiant, CA Wily, Compuware

Cloud:Keynote, Gomez, AlertSite

CA Wily, HP, BMC, VM Ware, Solarwinds, IBM Tivoli

Value: Dotcom-monitor, WebsitePulse

OnNet: Naggios, Sitescope, Solarwinds, Alchemy Eye

Security

• Access absolute need to control credit card data

• Outsource as much of the credit card lifecycle as possible

• PCI compliancy is and will become more expensive

• PCI audits are mandatory for SaaS/OD service providers

Security Focus- Credit Card

Global Security Policy

PCI DSS

KeyStore

CC Auth

Level I

Payment Auth

User Confidence

Key Management

Security Best BetsLevel II Level III Level IV

CyberSource, Payment Tech

HackerSafe, Verisign, CyberTrust, TRUSTe, BBB

OnLine,

nCypher, RSA, OpSource (E2E Outsourcing)

New Support Paradigm

• Role of Support has changed

dramaticaly

• Traditionally support is seen as cost

center

• SaaS Support is critical for success of

business

New Support Paradigm –

Customer Service

Responsible for Customer Churn

Accountable for customers' utilization of the

service

Tasked with being first line of

customer calls

Ordering, billing & provisioning can be

automated

Tasked with provisioning and billing

issues

Valued groupCost Center

SaaS ModelTraditional ISV

Customer

Service

- Konverge Digital Corporation

New Support Paradigm – Help

Desk

Responsible for Customer Churn

First Line Help Desk can be automatedTasked with being first line of

customer support calls

Accountable for business meeting SLAsSupporting numerous builds and

versions of software

Supports operationsHelp Desk is technical solver

with both internal & external

customers

SaaS ModelTraditional ISV

Help Desk /

Support

Services

- Konverge Digital Corporation

Support

• Automate tiers 1 and 2

• Support shifts from users to incident management– 24x7 staffing

– Change rights, change management

– Owns SLA

• Outsource– KB, click to chat

– Operations support (break/fix)

Level I

Outsource Tier 1-2

Outsource

24x7 Ops Support

Support Best BetsLevel II Level III Level IV

RightNow, Parature,Talisma,eStara,

CSS SlashSupport, Capgemini,

Service-now.com, BMC, BladeLogic, Visible Ops,

TripWireTools/Services

Closing

• Careful planning early

• Focus on hidden costs

• Small costs grow exponentially Levels 1-2

• Difference between profitability and bleeding slow death

• Plan for multi-tenancy early

John Overton

John.Overton@coradiant.com