Hybrid Cloud - The Green Future

Session Date & Time: Day 3 March 25 13:15pm EST (10.15AM PST)- (45min)
Keywords: Hybrid Cloud
Authors: Jan Aleman, CEO, Servoy.
Abstract: Cloud adoption has been steadily growing over the years, but both in spite of and because of the economy, 2009 promises to be the inflection point of wide-scale cloud adoption. Those companies which were unaware, or semi-aware of the cloud can no longer ignore the strong value proposition of access to previously inaccessible productivity tools; the ability to collaborate with teams, partners and customers; shifting focus from IT to business, and improving speed to market through instantly set up solutions.

The cloud approach brings very compelling benefits to companies, which is why it resonates so well. Under this approach, the software solution resides at the vendor's remote servers, rather than the customer's own servers, and is accessed via an internet connection as a "service". Software configuration, upgrades, maintenance, and support are all responsibilities of the vendor; customers adopt a "pay-as-you-go" pricing structure, with monthly fees based upon actual use. Since they're now "renting" the software rather than "buying" it, companies have access to otherwise prohibitively expensive enterprise class technologies.

Unlike Microsoft and Salesforce.com, there are now smart, agile, evolved enterprise applications that support an integrated hybrid SaaS, cloud infrastructure, and on-premise software environment. In the past, you might buy 100 licenses for an app and find out a year later that only 30 people used them. Today, you start out by buying 20 seats from Salesforce.com and add more as you need them. The difference with software as a service is you don't pay upfront for licenses you might eventually need, you just pay for what you use.

Users no longer have to decide between the cloud or on-premise - not with hybrid applications. The new hybrid platform gives users the option of running their applications hosted online - on dedicated servers, virtual servers, or any form of cloud computing - or on-premises for anywhere access. These hybrid applications can be deployed as SaaS or on-premises through a browser and a native client.

ISVs particularly have a hunger to deliver a superior solution to their customers seeking hybrid deployment options. At the same time, they shouldn't want to lock their customers into a SaaS-only mode, but should also offer the option to run on-premises at any moment.

Hybrid software development platforms combine the best of two approaches - on-premises and in the cloud - to meet a wide range of customer needs. Combined with mobile enterprise deployment, ISVs can use a hybrid approach to offer customers choices that meet their budgeting, resource, and timing needs and maximize revenue.

Most modern SaaS platforms dictate that you use their proprietary platform, their proprietary infrastructure, their proprietary language, and their limited browser-based proprietary development tool. Then, once you've developed and deployed your application, you're at their mercy. If you want to integrate with local hardware, local databases, or other local resources - you need to write even more code. What happens when your customer wants to take that same application and put it behind their own firewall?

ISVs can replace their traditional terminal server technology with web- and smart-client technology. By redesigning applications to fit these modern architectures, total carbon footprints can be reduced by 90 percent. So now with hybrid SaaS, you can redesign our software and development platform to minimize power consumption both from a economic, as well as an environmental point of view.

About author:

Jan Aleman is one of the most distinguished thought leaders on Cloud Computing in the world. As secretary of EuroCloud compendium (www.eurocloud.org), he has been a disruptive technology visionary leading the cloud revolution in computing. He is a published author and heavily quoted in many IT journals such as InfoWorld, Computerworld, Dr. Dobbs and others, as well as guest and keynote speaker at many cloud computing conferences worldwide. Jan is also on the steering committee of the ICT Office SaaS/Cloud Group.

-- Cloud Computing Conference - Cloud Slam 2010.