Scheduling Chronicles

Software as a Service a Savior for IT?

It's certainly not new news that software-as-a-service (SaaS) applications can save companies hundreds or thousands of dollars but in some IT corners, it's viewed as kryptonite. But why? 

As Jeff Kaplan, managing director of THINKstrategies and founder of the SaaS Showplace, notes in his article in eCommerce Times, IT has typically been concerned about SaaS because of its web-based architecture, the uncertainty over how SaaS applications will affect their operations and organization, and that SaaS was being adopted without direct or heavy IT participation or approval.  

However, it hasn't taken long for many IT professionals to realize that SaaS can actually make their lives easier.  In addition to making corporate executives happier with the cost savings, the time to manage and maintain SaaS applications is much easier than traditional on-premise solutions.  In fact, Kaplan's THINKstrategies recently completed a survey indicating that SaaS satisfaction rates exceed 90%.  So ultimately, if IT professionals adopt SaaS rather than fight it, they become part of the solution, not part of the problem.  They can become more involved in the oversight of choosing the applications, reviewing the vendor, and ultimately be a major factor in the cost savings of deploying SaaS applictions. 

Business Intelligence and Alternative Workspace Unite

Uncertain economic times create a heightened sense of awareness for most businesses.  As a result, most organizations require more insight and measurement surrounding internal projects and initiatives in order to insure maximum ROI.  In the past, identifying metrics, gathering data and monitoring the trends was a full time project in itself.  With new business intelligence (BI) solutions this effort is greatly reduced and systems can be created to effectively monitor projects and track success.

William Copacino of Oco, Inc. recently wrote about Effective Business Intelligence for an Uncertain Economy in Industry Week.  In his article he outlines 5 key BI trends that companies will rely on in 2009 and beyond.  While his 5 key points are made regarding BI in general, his thoughts can be applied to many industries and projects.  As an example, many organizations are undertaking Alternative Workspace (AWS) programs, such as hoteling, as a means of reducing real estate costs.  Successfully implementing an AWS program touches on many different areas of an organization and often involves collecting and monitoring data from isolated systems.  Combining Copacino’s key points with our AWS example provides further insight regarding how organizations can apply these concepts today.

Growth of Complementary BI
Common BI platforms within organizations have sometimes served as barriers to implementation and organizations are beginning to see the value in BI solutions for specific business needs.  In many cases a BI platform is just that, a generic tool not focused on solving any specific business issue.  BI tools are emerging in the marketplace to address specific business issues, such as alternative workspace.  Combining data from facility databases, scheduling, and presence detection systems can give a complete view of the success and adoption of an AWS program.  As an example, PeopleCube will be launching their workplace business intelligence solution shortly which is designed specifically to address space utilization performance and trends related to alternative workspace and other reserved space.

SaaS Goes Upmarket
Organizations of all sizes are under pressure to complete projects with reduced resources.  Deploying in a SaaS model will become a necessity for many organizations lacking the resources to deploy and maintain more internal systems.  In addition, technology has advanced to the point that methods for aggregating and summarizing data from disperse systems internally has gained acceptance within the walls of IT.  Deployment of SaaS solutions has also become a critical part of many organizations’ disaster recovery plans.

Information Silos Will Tumble
Most solutions in place today are still transactional in nature.  When analytical views are available they tend to be focused on transaction data available within the system.  No one wants to add transaction data from one system into another and then build out more performance metrics.  BI solutions provide the ability to take transaction data from various systems, aggregate and summarize the data in a more meaningful format and combine that data with data from other systems.  In doing this, data is turned into information, which can be more easily visualized and monitored. 

BI systems such as PeopleCube’s play a large role in consolidating information from different systems into a meaningful format without creating new system integration projects.  Initially these systems will be focused in the area of facility management, resource scheduling and presence detection.  Occupancy data, planned reservations, actual usage and visitor information will be pulled from various systems and combined with space and costing information to provide a means of effectively measuring internal use of resources.  This will be the case for comparison between departments as well as collecting data for forecasting future trends and requirements, such as how much space will be needed when deploying AWS to a new region given a specific mix of employees by department and job function.  While this would have required guess work in the past, it is easily measured when using BI to combine data from various systems.

Collaborative BI Throughout the Extended Enterprise
While extending these metrics outside the four walls of the enterprise will provide value for some industries, a greater value exists in comparing internal metrics externally.  BI tools focused on specific business needs, such as AWS, provide a common method of measuring and monitoring success in a common format.  This format can then be used to benchmark an organization against other companies in the same industry.  This will be the true value of BI tools in the future, providing standard metrics to which organizations can compare their operations against industry norms.

Corporate Hot Spots Will Drive BI
With the current economic situation, only projects with substantial ROI and payback within a short period of time will be considered.  AWS programs are hot projects in many companies because of the ability to reduce infrastructure costs and realize a substantial savings in little time.  Even for growing organizations, AWS programs provide the ability to increase headcount without increasing real estate.  While many companies launch pilot AWS programs, BI tools are a necessity to effectively monitor the success – and improve upon that success – of the pilot programs in future roll-outs.

BI solutions will have a major impact in 2009 for organizations with the vision to aggregate data from multiple systems and develop key metrics and measurements related to specific business objectives.  Companies that continue to focus on BI platforms will be hampered by high deployment costs and delays from building solutions.  SaaS deployment of BI systems can reduce IT involvement, avoid capital expenditure and decrease time of roll-out.  Doing this allows organizations to outpace competitors and reduce costs.

Best Practices for Selecting a Subscription Service Provider

Larry Steel of eWeekrecently reported on his recommendations for choosing a software as a service(SaaS) provider that I think makes a lot of sense, especially given today's economic climate.  The SaaS market continues to grow (it's expected to reach $11.5 billion through 2011 according to Steel) because businesses are realizing the economic benefits of managed hosting services.  But once you decide that SaaS is right for your business, the question then becomes which vendor to choose as your services provider.  

Steel outlines five key tips to help and evaluate the right subscription service provider for you.

1. Select a hosting company that has widespread expertise in running a standard, global enterprise infrastructure
2. Find a SAAS hosting provider that will work with you to understand your specific SAAS requirements, helping you grow your business and your brand
3. Ensure your hosting provider can provide rock-solid hosting services and will handle all facets of your SAAS implementation
4. Select a hosting provider that has a wide network of partners to provide the right resources and greater choice
5. Partner with a hosting provider that is looking and thinking ahead to the next evolution of SAAS

As a provider of alternative workspace, facility management, and resource scheduling software, we (PeopleCube) make sure to address these points in order to provide the best possible service to our customers.  So If your even considering moving to a SaaS application deployment model, I encourage you to read Steel's entire post.  You'll quickly discover that not all vendors are equal and when it comes to your business, risk aversion is a key factor to economic success.

Drawbase Software Enhances Workplace Management Solutions with PeopleCube’s Resource Scheduler

Drawbase Software, a leading worldwide supplier of building design and facilities management information systems, and PeopleCube, provider of intelligent workplace and resource management technology, today announced they have entered into a strategic partnership to provide customers with more robust and flexible facilities management and scheduling solutions. PeopleCube provides powerful, easy-to-use web-based enterprise scheduling solutions and Drawbase software is a powerful, easy-to-use, user-configurable workplace management application suite. Together they provide a compelling total workplace management solution for enterprise facilities that offers an outstanding ROI.

“We are very excited about the partnership between Drawbase and PeopleCube,” said Evan Kontos, president of Drawbase Software. “We see PeopleCube's extensive resource management solution set as a natural compliment to Drawbase’s traditional facility management capabilities.  This added functionality will allow us to provide our customers with additional tools to drive down real estate operating costs and optimize available resources across the workplace environment.”

Resource Scheduler allows users to quickly and easily schedule alternative workspace, shared resources, and manage energy consumption.  “Given the rising energy costs as well as the social and economic pressures to go green, energy conservation is no longer a choice for organizations but rather a mandate,” said PeopleCube president and CEO John T. Anderson. “Our relationship with Drawbase and the integration between Resource Scheduler and the Drawbase workplace management suite allow business customers large and small to maximize their space and resource utilization while minimizing energy consumption.”

IDC Predicts Strong Growth in SaaS for 2009

Research firm IDC recently reissued its projections for SaaS in 2009 and the story is a good one.  Contrary to most economic and development forecasts these days, IDC expects the SaaS market to increase dramatically in 2009.  This is consistent with the predictions PeopleCube recently made about the growth in SaaS due to the productivity benefits and cost savings of the SaaS model.

As Phil Wainewright of ZDNet reports in his SaaS blog, IDC expects SaaS growth to exceed 40% in 2009, up for 36% as previously forecasted in July of 2008.  Why?  According to IDC:

"… the harsh economic climate will actually accelerate the growth prospects for the software as a service (SaaS) model as vendors position offerings as right-sized, zero-CAPEX alternatives to on-premise applications. Buyers will opt for easy-to-use subscription services which meter current use, not future capacity, and vendors and partners will look for new products and recurring revenue streams.”

This falls in direct line to what we (PeopleCube) are hearing from customers and prospects.  What is it that makes SaaS so appealing when budgets are being slashed?  As we indicated, software-as-a-service accelerates a customer’s adoption of the application, which helps provide a quick return on investment. It offers a very affordable total cost of ownership, as well as the ability to increase—or decrease—usage as needs change. 

You should take a look at PeopleCube's recent press release that discusses the 2009 cost-saving predictions, including substantial growth in SaaS, alternative workspace, data reporting, and integrated workspace management.