What you need to know about SaaS management tools
The SaaS vs. on-premise debate has spanned the years since new age consumption models for technology were born.
The accepted reasons to adopt SaaS are no-brainers for DevOps organizations. SaaS lets you start up fast, is asset-free, and has a lower commitment subscription model. You expect time to production in hours or days, rather than the months or years that an on-premise software installation can take to fully deploy the solution. Here’s why SaaS IT Ops tools are a better choice for your DevOps implementations:
Agility and Time to Market. It makes no sense to invest up-front in a solution that commits you to a technology when you’re moving at light speed. Long feature release cycles from traditional software vendors and the regular maintenance required slow down your DevOps teams. On-premise upgrades will likely require central IT support, not to mention the risk inherent in upgrading the software.
Evergreen Platform. As you grow your environment and add new technologies, your management solution needs the requisite features and plugins to work. A SaaS platform continually updates the technology, behind the scenes at the vendor, so your engineer’s time isn’t wasted on managing the maintenance and upgrades.
Microservices. With application workloads migrating to the cloud, monolithic app architectures are falling out of favor. Microservices allow you to build applications as suites of services where each unit of software can be independently upgraded. Enterprises can quickly adopt hybrid cloud architectures thanks to microservices, where some services live in a public cloud while others in owned data centers. SaaS tools offer an integrated approach to monitor dynamic architectures by tracking the performance of your application as a logical entity before and after each update.
Infrastructure as Code. With Infrastructure as code, sysadmins use automation frameworks for standing up or turning off production environments. IT teams can orchestrate complex deployments without manual intervention in an error-free manner. SaaS tools help you manage automated infrastructure that’s written as code and monitor different production instances across hybrid clouds.
Enterprise applications are clearly going the SaaS way. By 2018, IDC estimates that 28% of enterprise software will be SaaS based with on-premise software attaining negative growth rates. Embrace the age of agile operations by leveraging SaaS tools to improve build quality, increase release velocity, and manage complex infrastructures across your enterprise.
About the Author / Varma Kunaparaju
Varma Kunaparaju is CTO at Vistara and a seasoned technologist with over 20 years of experience leading engineering teams to deliver enterprise software. Reach him on twitter at: @varma1
