Week 4 – T4.4 Research
There are many software models that can assist a company in becoming wireless. “Software as a Service (SaaS) is a software distribution model in which applications are hosted by a vendor or service provider and made available to customers over a network, typically the Internet.” [1] I will be touching on Teamlab a Saas company and Tidewell Hospice who implemented the use of Saas. Cloud service has also been touched on in this report.
Teamlab is a Saas company that provides many services. “TeamLab is a corporate collaboration platform for document and project management that integrates a number of online organization, management and communication tools.”[3] Project management, business collaboration, document management (import documents from Google docs, Zoho, Box.net), instant messaging, mobile full version, calendar, customer relationship management, and email management would make them a one stop shop for any company using their service. Just within project management Teamlab offers milestones, task, ARM (access right management), time tracking, reporting, discussions and helps build your team. These features that Teamlab offers would be invaluable to those using their service, no more searching for the company server as all docs would be available on Teamlab for the group to pull from. Teamlab is already looking to improve their system as they have on boarded Avangate for ecommerce - “SaaS Vendor TeamLab Selects Avangate As eCommerce Provider”. [3]
A Saas can help with so many things a company might want to accomplish, some need to concentrate on one specific thing as in the case of Tidewell Hospice and their use of Customer Relationship Management (CRM). “Tidewell uses Salesforce's SaaS-based CRM, integrated with its internal electronic medical record (EMR) system.” [2] Tidewell was looking to come out of the dark ages "Our liaisons were going from account to account with their own little binders, spreadsheets and rolodexes. We had a typical offline, manual, decentralized, zero-visibility situation,". [2] They needed to have all this information in one location so all employees could have contacts and needed information at their fingertips. Tidewell Hospice might think of looking outside of the box for only what they needed at this specific time. They would probably benefit from using more services on a Saas.
In an article in eweek, Greg Schultz showed some reservations a company might have regarding taking that leap of faith to “cloud computing’s software-as-a service model”[4]. There are many things a company needs to consider when debating on moving from the old fashion servers to cloud. Although a company would have a competitive advantage to using cloud with the speed and dependability it is said to have, some companies might pull the more conservative card and see how things go. “Companies are going to go with what works. If a client-server system installed seven years ago still works and gets the job done, they will stay with it but keep a close eye on it at the same time. If the budget opens up, a refresh is needed and the tech is there, then they may make a change. But the conditions all have to be right,” as stated by Greg Schulz in article of eweek. [4] Many companies have already jumped on the band wagon, so to speak, but some are holding off seeing how the technology will show with time and dependability. “IT leaders express continuing reservations about data security, 24/7 access to data in a public cloud, and whether a provider will still be here years from now. If it’s outside the firewall, it’s not completely controllable, and IT managers tend to like complete control.” [4] In a case like this of a company holding off on using Cloud the answer to this “problem” would be when the company is ready for use they will take that leap and use the service.
In essence for a company to use a Saas and to what degree it would depend on if they are ready to use this service, only one small portion of it or the full Monty.
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