SaaS
Transformation

More and more companies operating in the IT sector are born with, have switched to, or are evaluating the Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) business model as an effective way to deliver their services to customers. SaaS in the cloud is the perfect solution to leverage all the available modern tools and automated processes, but how much do you know about the optimal way to build these products on AWS?

The problem

Let’s say that your company is interested in managing a SaaS product on AWS, but you are unsure how you should approach the problem or how to start implementing a new feature that needs to be integrated with the offer. Whether you are:

• Thinking about adopting a SaaS model
• Planning to onboard a lot of new customers
• Already using SaaS, on AWS or on another platform
• Working on new license-based solutions
• Looking to modernize your whole setup or a specific part of it
• Interested in improving your DevOps pipeline

… we at Ankercloud think you could strongly benefit from the AWS SaaS Discovery Program.

The solution

Being a SaaS-certified partner and benefitting from tight cooperation with AWS, Ankercloud embarks you on a discovery journey with the aim of giving you full guidance for SaaS-related innovations, customized to your needs. That’s what the SaaS Discovery Program is all about: a period of time ranging from 2–4 weeks to be spent together, starting with technical deep dive workshops to align on your specific starting point and requirements, all the way into AWS architecture design, modernization discussions, TCO computation, best practices explanation, and much more — always suited to your business case.

But the good part does not end here: depending on your growth potential, we are able to provide the SaaS Discovery Program free of charge for you (i.e. 100% discount/funding).

High Potential use cases

The focus of the SaaS Discovery Program is always to accommodate your needs and concentrate on improving your weak points. Depending on your inputs, examples of common use cases can be:

• SaaS Design Decomposition
• Authentication and Access Management
• CI/CD Pipelines
• Database Multi-tenancy and Tenants isolation
• Security and Reliability
• SaaS DevOps
• Agility and Operations

But this list is non-exhaustive, and we at Ankercloud are always open to learning about your specific obstacles and understanding how we can support you. And here is our challenge for you: bring us your most critical SaaS-related issue, we will be happy to discuss it and bring all our deep technical knowledge to develop a solution together.

What about the outcome?

This program is intended to provide flexibility and visibility during the whole planning and discovery process. Therefore, once the program is completed, there is no obligation to further continue with the implementation of the developed solution on AWS: no commitment of any kind is in fact implied, as the name discovery suggests.

Several documents and deliverables will anyway help you in the decision-making process, giving full visibility to the planned solution. At the end of the program, Ankercloud will in fact provide you with a detailed technical report with an architecture diagram, a complete analysis of the AWS costs within an 18 months time horizon, and a full proposal to continue working together with the implementation, to give us the possibility of providing further hands-on support if needed.

Sounds interesting? Are you ready to start exploring new SaaS solutions and best practices?

Don’t hesitate to contact us at: cloudengagement@ankercloud.com

Let us guide you through the steps and check your eligibility for the SaaS Discovery Program.

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Software-as-a-service (SaaS) on Cloud

Software-as-a-service (SaaS) has been around since the early 2000s and is a cost-effective alternative to the traditional IT deployment where customers have to buy or build their own IT infrastructures, install the software themselves, configure the applications and employ an IT department to maintain it all.

SaaS offers a connection and subscription to IT services built on shared infrastructure via the cloud and deployed over the internet, rather than purchased and downloaded or installed locally.

With the continuous growth of cloud computing and the clear advantages of subscription-based services, it comes as no surprise that the software as a service market continues to expand rapidly. Many organisations are committed to purchasing SaaS solutions rather than buying and hosting software internally.

Furthermore, on a SaaS provider side, this software distribution model makes it possible even for small companies, to reach a broad range of customers, opening doors to new markets and geographies.

„SaaS remains the largest public cloud services market segment, forecasted to reach $176.6 billion in end-user spending in 2022. Gartner expects steady velocity within this segment as enterprises take multiple routes to market with SaaS, for example via cloud marketplaces, and continue to break up larger, monolithic applications into compostable parts for more efficient DevOps processes.” Source: Gartner (April 2022)

Characteristics of SaaS

SEAMLESSLY AVAILABLE & SCALABLE

Uptime and the ability to respond to continually changing requirements and workloads build the basis for any successful SaaS product. Cloud provides a broad range of capabilities like x and y that can be leveraged to align with the uptime requirements of SaaS environments. It also provides dynamic scaling mechanisms that allow for the alignment of tenant consumption with the actual load.

PAY-AS-YOU-GO PRICING

Continuously managing and optimising costs is essential for SaaS providers. With the elasticity of the Cloud, they are able to build SaaS solutions that are optimised to match the infrastructure of a multi-tenant load and its scaling requirements.

GLOBAL REACH

One big advantage of the SaaS model is fast access to new markets and geographies. The availability of the public Cloud in all the principal geographic regions allows for global reach and high availability due to multi-region set-ups.

SECURITY

SaaS solutions hosted in the cloud providers can be distributed over multiple servers scattered in multiple geographical locations and have automatic backups, ensuring an extremely high level of security.

INNOVATION

The breadth and depth of tools and services available on the Cloud can facilitate a faster time-to-market for SaaS providers. The pace of innovation in the Cloud also provides SaaS companies with new services and capabilities to enhance the features, cost, and management profile of their solutions.

Making the shift: from on-prem to SaaS-enabled solutions

SaaS turns the traditional model of software delivery on its head. Rather than purchasing licenses, paying an annual maintenance fee for upgrades and support, and running applications in-house, SaaS allows organizations to buy only the number of licenses they require as their need fluctuate.

For a SaaS provider, the shift from providing on-premises solutions to becoming a SaaS-based solution provider involves intense levels of continuous testing. This means, by becoming a SaaS provider, there needs to be a shift of understanding within the organization to transform from being a software provider to a service provider.

From an operational perspective, this requires new capabilities, such as meeting service level agreements, establishing real-time usage monitoring and billing capabilities, and meeting strict security requirements.

The robust infrastructure required to provide SaaS services 24×7 requires a substantial investment.

The business challenges are even greater, ranging from the dramatically lower margins provided by SaaS, to changes in cash flow and pricing models, to requirements for customer support.

With this in mind, once a decision is made to make the shift, it will be important to rigorously evaluate the different potential SaaS models and adopt an iterative deployment approach allowing for greater learning and flexibility during the course of the deployment. Software companies and their customers should periodically assess their overall SaaS roadmap to regularly check their progress against their strategic goals.

Accelerate your SaaS journey with Ankercloud

While the advantages of a cloud-based SaaS model are strong and allow a company to focus on its core goals of developing, delivering applications, and improving its customer experience, it is important to pay special attention to key components like infrastructure budget management, capacity management, and platform availability. This is where an experienced SaaS partner like Ankercloud can be the key to a successful SaaS adoption. We support our customers on their journey to develop a SaaS model on AWS with a consolidated approach, years of experience, and deep AWS knowledge.

Curious? Reach out to us at cloudengagement@ankercloud.com

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Are you ready for the Cloud?

A successful cloud migration begins with a detailed analysis of goals, business plans, and resources currently used, with the initial purpose of gaining a clear understanding of the starting point, discovering the gaps to be filled, and developing a strong business case. It is in this exact context that our Accelerated Cloud Exploration (ACE) program comes into play: as an Advanced AWS Consulting Partner, a team of specialists from Ankercloud guides our customers through a complete assessment phase covering all these points to make a well-informed decision on whether and how to move to the cloud.

Ankercloud’s expertise is combined with a variety of professional tools offered by AWS, starting with the Migration Readiness Assessment (MRA), which represents the first hands-on activity to embark on the Cloud Exploration journey. A customized roadmap is built to define the successive actions to be taken.

What is the MRA tool?

The Migration Readiness Assessment (MRA) tool is used to assess the customer’s strengths and weaknesses following the 6 areas of the AWS Cloud Adoption Framework: Business, Platform, People, Governance, Operations, and Security. It evaluates existing skills and set-up on a scale from 1 to 5, highlighting the readiness level and giving an overall score for each main focus area and related subtopics.

How does it work?

The process requires you to answer 80+ questions and is typically fulfilled in a 1-day workshop, but it can also take several days. Due to the difficulty of the topics and the depth of the analysis, it is important that the customer’s team and the experts from Ankercloud work well together to finish the tasks.

What is the outcome?

After data collection, Ankercloud generates a full report that includes charts, scores, and data visualization. Together with the customer, we can look at the results and determine which areas need more work and which are already ready to move to the cloud.

But the MRA workshop is just the beginning.

To finish the business case, the Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) must be calculated, and it may be necessary to evaluate how the on-premise resources are set up.

The AWS Migration Evaluator and Migration Portfolio Assessment are suitable tools to fulfill the missing analysis and guide our customers towards the completion of the ACE Program, ready for a PoC implementation. Based on the MRA results as well as the outcome of the other components of ACE, our customers have full visibility of the strengths and weaknesses of a potential migration to the cloud and can make an informed and confident decision if and how to migrate.

Further learning…

Are you willing to discover what the AWS cloud can offer but unsure what the best way to start is? Want to know more about MRA and the other tools available to complete the assessment phase, as well as our Accelerated Cloud Exploration program? Don’t hesitate to reach out to us, we will be more than happy to solve all your doubts and give support for getting started with AWS cloud technologies.

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