I’m sure most of you have seen and heard about cloud computing and Software-as-a-Service (SaaS)…but what do these things really mean and why should you care?

Cloud Computing simply means computing outside of the walls of your organization.  With high speed internet access to most businesses, faster computers and excess computing resources, now you can leverage these excess computing resources over the Internet.  Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) is a segment of Cloud Computing where you use Software over the Internet instead of having the software being hosted within the walls of your organization.

http://mfrtech.com/articles/2786.html

With SaaS you do not have to pay for the Hardware, Hardware Maintenance, Software Licenses, Application Support and Application Upgrades.  Application support includes your internal Information Technology (IT) staffing to support the application.  Some of you may begin wondering if you are becoming software companies when you manage these types of software applications on your site.

The city of Los Angeles has a decision to make. You see, the city’s old school e-mail system is pretty outdated and in need of a major overhaul. But like most other municipal governments, the budget for new tech systems is pretty tight these days. And so, city officials have been weighing the option of jumping on board with a cloud offering.

It’s a contract worth $7.25 million, according to a report in the Los Angeles Times. But, in the long-run, it’s worth so much more than that. Los Angeles is the second largest city in the U.S. and scoring a contract to overhaul and modernize the e-mail system could be a major score for either company.

http://blogs.zdnet.com/BTL/?p=25063

It would be a flagship contract that they can market to the rest of the country. When you buy it and they put on their masthead that you’re one of their customers, you find a trail of cities that say ‘I’ll follow suit.

What It Is: Storing data in the cloud, also known as data as a service or DaaS, is gaining attention within IT departments. A recent CIO.com survey found 46 percent of IT decision makers are giving cloud storage a look. It’s particularly appealing for data backups, according to Charles King, an analyst with Pund-IT. DaaS is cheaper than building a second data center. Backup storage could pave the way for companies using cloud vendors as collocation providers for any IT service or application, including CRM, ERP and data storage, says King.

Why The Hype: Companies that provide managed services for applications?such as Amazon and 3Tera?are looking for ways to increase revenue and use their facilities for more than hosted apps and secondary services, such as holding CRM data. So the marketing buzz is at full tilt, with seemingly every cloud services provider looking to add storage to its portfolio of offerings.

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/g/a/2009/09/24/urnidgns002570F3005978D88525763B005CC14B.DTL

Certain kinds of data will probably never make it to the cloud, King believes, including financial information and sensitive government documents.

To obtain the discount, new customers must shut down existing in-house servers or trade-in their current enterprise software licences.

http://www.itwire.com/content/view/27092/53/

NetSuite’s ‘cash for clunkers’ offer can trim $500 from every $5000 spent by new customers on the company’s cloud enterprise applications.

Under the contract with Jollibee, which operates one of the world’s largest fast-food chains, NetSuite is progressively deploying its SaaS OneWorld software suite throughout the retail food giant’s operation following the success of a Vietnamese pilot program.

http://www.itwire.com/content/view/26950/598/

This initial implementation went live within two months. Going forward, because of the flexibility and speed to implementation features, NetSuite OneWorld can enable Jollibee to take a multi-tiered approach in China

SpringSource is an open source java developer that provides enterprise web application development and management.

http://www.edlconsulting.com/newsdetail.php?id=347&headline=Cloud_computing_vendor_VMware_acquires_SpringSource_for_$362_million

The primary focus of these technologies will be in the Platform-as-a-Service market

Of course, IT is never 100 percent at fault for any massive project-whether an ERP or CRM implementation, mainframe migration or networking upgrade. The business side usually plays its part (think: “Best Supporting Actor in an IT Debacle”).

But the unfortunate and unfair fact is that because these initiatives are considered “technology projects,” the business will most always look in IT’s direction when there’s blame to be tossed around.

http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9136293/What_IT_Can_Expect_After_a_Huge_Tech_Project_Failure

“For some reason,” he adds, “we haven’t learned as an IT industry about driving incremental planning and change, which, in my mind, would help to mitigate the high rises and high falls of project failures.”

Integrify, which is available either on-premise as licensed server software or as a hosted service, offers a 100% Web-based solution to streamline business processes, centrally manage user requests from multiple locations, streamline workflow and operations, automate business processes, and provide increased compliance, visibility and efficiency across organizations.

http://www.emediawire.com/releases/2009/8/prweb2694554.htm

http://www.wolfframeworks.com/casestudy2.asp

Solution: Wolf based, Zero capital, Customized Supply Chain & Transaction Management SaaS Application with cost/performance analysis reports for every retail outlet.

http://www.wolfframeworks.com/casestudy1.asp

Solution : Wolf based, Zero capital, Fleet Management SaaS Application with cost/performance analysis reports