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The delivery of enabling software as a service

The downturn that followed the collapse of the dot-com has resulted in an industry-wide drive towards the delivery of Information Technology (IT) in a way that best delivers business value. This initiative goes under a number of names, including Microsoft's "Agile Enterprise" as well as "Business On Demand" and the "Adaptive Infrastructure". These instantiations do not represent any one technology, but they all share a vision of how IT can be delivered in some way as a service to the business - a service where we can call on functionality to enable dynamic business processes, rather than being dependent on large, monolithic applications and dedicated servers to manage complete areas of the business.
Author/s: Clive Longbottom , Bob Tarzey
Created: 01/06/2005
Filename: Enabling_Software_as_a_Service_v2.pdf
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The purpose of the report is to consider one layer of IT - the Enabling Software layer - in the context of this vision. This layer consists of a number of software services covering functionality such as databases, content management, transaction and presentation management, and a variety of other software. These packages are considered as "enabling software" as they don't deliver applications in themselves, rather they incorporate a number of functions that can be used by applications and/or other calling functions. If we wish to deliver applications as a service, the enabling software layer also needs to be delivered as a service.

While there are a number of business-oriented benefits to this service model, there are also a number of issues and concerns that are preventing organisations from adopting it. All the same, there is sufficient evidence that the delivery of software as a service is a positive step to take. By looking at these areas of weakness, we can propose an approach to overcome them.

This report treats these topics as a whole. The benefits are presented here, back to back with the issues, and a set of principles is given to help maximise an organisation's potential for success. The goal is to offer a coherent set of starting points for any organisation, with evolution, not revolution, being the key. As such, this report presents a series of evolutionary stages to help organisations understand where they are and what steps they can take to move forward.

Deliberately non-technical, this report can be read by anyone who wishes to have a broader understanding of how software can work better to deliver applications that meet the needs of the business. It incorporates examples of products from Microsoft, but its advice is appropriate for users of all environments.