Parsing the cloud acronyms—SaaS, PaaS, IaaS—and why we should care
This post was authored by Prem Uppaluru. Prem is the President & Chief Executive Officer of Transera.
Cloud computing is the broad umbrella under which not only SaaS (Software as a Service) fits but also PaaS (Platform as a Service) and IaaS (Infrastructure as a Service). SaaS refers to an end-user application. Salesforce.com, for example, is a very popular SaaS application. PaaS is a slightly different animal, often referred to as “middleware.” In other words, it is software but it is not an end-user application. Dropbox, which provides a platform for storing multimedia in a single location that can be accessed by a number of different applications and devices, is a good example of PaaS. At the far end of the spectrum, Amazon web services provides infrastructure in the form of storage and servers for hosting websites and applications, an offering that includes both hardware and software. Said another way, SaaS is for end-users, PaaS is for developers, and IaaS is for IT folks.
While the offerings from Salesforce.com, Dropbox, and Amazon are all different, each provides a technology over the Internet cloud as a service. Most importantly, the customer is using software and hardware that has been optimized to run over the Internet via a browser as a service. The traditional hosted model takes an application that wasn’t originally designed for hosting, makes a few modifications if it’s to be delivered over the web, or, more typically, delivers the application “as is” over a dedicated network via servers dedicated for each customer.
Why should call centers care?
Many businesses do not wish to lock up capital in call center technology purchases and many, in addition, lack the operational staff to manage implementations of increasing complexity. When call centers look for ways to benefit from technology without suffering the headaches of owning and managing it, they often turn to hosting vendors.
This is a false promise to cure IT headaches. A hosting vendor charges for the dedicated software and hardware as well as staff to manage it on the enterprise's behalf. There are no scale advantages or call center virtualization advantages. Consequently, there are no real cost savings. Frequently, a hosted solution also adds additional transport costs because calls have to be backhauled from the hosting vendor's data center to the enterprise's call centers.
True on-demand virtual call centers deliver real cost savings for businesses without sacrificing functionality or features. Enterprises can't get these savings by simply having someone else host and manage traditional on-premise call center solutions.