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Expert’s voice
By Céline Bousquet, Director of Operations at Agarik
According to the Gartner consulting firm, the SaaS market (Software as a Service) will be worth 22.1 billion dollars in 2015 and will continue with its impressive expansion taking with it other sections of the cloud, IaaS (Infrastructure as a Service) and PaaS (Platform as a Service).
Publishers are therefore central to the transformation of IT and the switch from Capex to Opex, from ownership to rental. Aware of the need to adapt their own model in line with these changes and to continue to grow, some publishers are still asking questions; the Cloud is certainly a stage needed for their development but what will be the impact of the change on current systems? Others, those most recently on the scene, have grown up in this world in perpetual motion and from their founding have delivered an SaaS model. And when their particular solution slot is buoyant, they quickly take market share and make serious inroads on their elders.
Although it is customary to reconsider the benefits of the model for the end user (easy access, payment by user, flexibility of use …), we wish to focus here on the interest of the model for publishers and how a move to it can be achieved with serenity.
Quick installation, an accelerated purchasing process, direct access to business line departments: publishers have understood the interest of this model for their clients which in some cases involves the very survival of their activity. To benefit from these new rules of the game, they must control, in our opinion, 3 points:
- Use the services of a provider who adapts to their new economic model
- If the publisher uses an “On premises” model (with hardware support), manage to deliver a SaaS model which limits application re-developments
- Guarantee high availability and security of its applications for end users
What solutions?
The publisher’s customers ask it to charge for its software by user or task, so why would an infrastructure provider not do the same? We therefore advise the publisher to form a partnership relationship with its hosting service where an understanding of the business model must be the driving-force of the relationship.
The architecture of cloud platforms can be designed to support the requirements of applications. Niche players will be able to provide better technical adaptation.
Finally, availability and security are commitments that your hosting service – outsourcer will make. Among the points to be checked: 24/7 availability of its teams (on-site or simply on stand-by?) and the level of its certifications, for example ISO 27001 will guarantee its good practice in terms of security.
.At Agarik we assist publishers in transforming their business model, such as the company One2Team, a major projects’ management software publisher whom we have worked with since 2004. When in 2008, One2Team decided to switch from traditional licensing to SaaS, the partnership relationship was essential to this transformation. Today the initiative has paid off since One2Team provides equipment worth more than 7 billion euros (Equipped projects total budget) and numbers more than ten thousand users in France and Europe.
As for the company TalentSoft, SaaS European leader in the Integrated talent Management of Talents and Skills, in 2012 the company completed its offering, optimised by the Cloud, by hosting its solution on the Agarik PaaS. Joël Bentilola, Technical Director of TalentSoft explained: “Cloud Computing offers a real competitive advantage. Thanks to the Agarik platform, we can offer solutions which combine public and private Clouds in accordance with the highest security standards.” Today, more than 2 million users and 10 million candidates are connected to TalentSoft worldwide.