Scheduling Chronicles

PeopleCube and Building Sustainability LTD Collaborate to Help Customers Reduce Carbon Footprint

PeopleCube recently announced that it has partnered with UK-based Building Sustainability LTD (BSL) to offer an integrated solution that helps organizations monitor and adjust their carbon footprint based on workspace utilization.  Specifically, BSL's Footprint Tracker energy consumption and management tool integrates with PeopleCube's Resource Scheduler workspace and resource management application using the Resource Scheduler API. 

This integration provides customers with an innovative dashboard that allows them to monitor and reduce energy consumption based on efficient scheduling and utilization of workspace and energy resources.  By understanding energy consumption patters better, they’re able to reduce their energy consumption costs and their carbon footprint.

SaaS: Software-as-a-Security Blanket?

Some concerns about Software-as-a-Service in the past have revolved around security.  How secure is my data?  If I'm not maintaining the data on my own servers, how do I know its safe.

TechWorld, a UK-based website focussing on IT infrastructure and networking, recently issued an article that focuses on the improved security of SaaS.   In fact, Peter Watkins of WebRoot Software, a security software vendor, claims that SaaS could offer better protection against internet-based malware than traditional on-premise software deployments.  The article says that Gartner estimates that "as as many as 75 percent of enterprises will be the victims of targeted stealth attacks with financial motivation - spyware or bots, for instance - and will remain 'blissfully unaware' that their networks have been compromised."

With that in mind, Watkins said that more and more security vendors such as his view software-as-a-service as a better option for delivering some forms of security as opposed to in-house software or appliances. In fact, he said his company recently implemented a SaaS email solution to better protect themselves.  So it's clear that as SaaS continues to evolve, one of the areas that developers are focusing on is ensuring that hosted data is as secure as possible - a critical step to building confidence in on-demand applications.

Outlining the Benefits of SaaS

The Aberdeen Group recently released a preview of some research conducted on the state of Software as a Service (SaaS).  The report chronicles the results of a survey conducted on SaaS and contains some interesting information on what’s driving companies to consider SaaS applications.  According to the report, the top factors include the benefits of increased implementation speed; increased flexibility and usability; and a reduced dependence on IT services, a dependence which can be crippling for many companies.

I’m sure we’ve all heard horror stories about companies that have lost entire days of productivity for simple issues like “the server crashed” or “the software wasn’t working properly.”  These and other problems can be avoided by implementing SaaS applications and is one of the primary reason why we here at PeopleCube offer Resource Scheduler on-demand.