When you wake up in the morning and turn on the light, you probably don’t think about the source of the power. As you switch on the television and start the coffee maker your thoughts are likely to be on the day ahead and not whether you have enough capacity to power the items you’re using in your home. You’re free of these worries because the power company has created a reliable service, shared among the whole community that scales to your individual, immediate demands. The service is metered so you pay your fair share based on what you use.
The basic concept behind cloud computing is very similar to this example. The Cloud is like a power plant for computing resources, ready to deliver what you need, when you need it. The Internet is like the power lines, a means to deliver the power reliably and efficiently to individual users. Many companies are creating Cloud services that you can use as you need them and pay for them as you consume them. There are already a host of shared capabilities grouped beneath the broad umbrella of cloud computing. These include sharing networks, computers, storage, and also software applications.
The main accelerant for the growth of these cloud services is the Internet. In the past ten years we have seen the Internet evolve from the dial-up based “world wide wait” to the blazing fast medium for the exchange of data, audio, and video. The speed of the Internet, coupled with excellent reliability and security improvements has made it the engine for innovation in the delivery of a wide range of services. Most of us use the Internet for much more than gathering information and sending email. We use it to manage our finances, coordinate calendars, purchase music, and back-up our files amongst a host of other capabilities.
Software as a Service, or SaaS, is the moniker for software applications delivered via the Internet from companies such as Amazon, IBM, Salesforce.com, Microsoft, Google, and others. SaaS is contrasted with the traditional “shrink wrapped” model for application delivery where the user installs and configures the software on a machine they own and maintain. Growth trends for Saas are strong, Gartner, Inc. predicts that the SaaS market will continue to grow at least 22.1% per year [1] and that by 2011, 25% or more of new software systems will be delivered as SaaS applications.[2]
So why is SaaS emerging as the dominant computing model today? The answer is because of the way the technology addresses the key needs and concerns of consumers.
Physical and logical security are among the top priorities for most organizations today. Having a sound risk management plan for security is as basic as having a sales and financial strategy. However, security seldom contributes to the bottom line of an organization and as such Chief Security Officers (CSOs) and Chief Information Officers (CIOs) must find ways to ensure that their function contributes as much as it can, while consuming the fewest resources possible. Each successful organization today is constantly asking how things can be done better at a lower cost. To understand the potential impact of Security as a Service, we will explore five areas that are of strategic importance to all organizations, otherwise known as “The 5 Cs”.
Over the following posts we will reveal each of the 5 Cs and describe how each can be addressed by cloud-based solutions.
-John Szczygiel
[1] Scheier, Robert L. August 20, 2007. “Your Data's Less Safe Today than Two Years Ago,” InfoWorld, http://www.infoworld.com/article/07/08/20/data-is-less-safe_1.html (January 4, 2008).
[2] “Gartner: SaaS Market Heats Up.” September 28, 2006 ebizq, http://www.ebizq.net/news/7314.html (January 20, 2008).
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