Posts Tagged ‘SaaS’

This guest blog features Fruition, a featured member of the SoftLayer Technology Partners Marketplace. Fruition’s SEO and SEM reporting web app provides highly accurate reports on search engine rankings and onsite signals that impact your Google and Bing rankings. In the video below, learn a little more about Fruition (and a few key SEO/SEM tips for small businesses) from Fruition’s Brad Anderson, and scroll down to read about SEO Goals and Key Indicators.

SEO Goals and Key Indicators

Google’s Feb 2012 Update

Between February 25-28th Google rolled out another big set of changes to their algorithm. These changes knocked down a lot of short cuts that SEO companies were using, including blog networks. The red flags have been there for a long time. Blog networks are easy to uncover simply because of the complexity of trying to setup a truly diverse hosting environment. It is not just separate C-class IP addresses it is also registrars, DNS, admin login IP addresses, plug-in profiles, etc. There are so many easy ways to group sites as being related or identical that it is not worth the effort of trying to take short cuts with your linking. Instead focus on what is going to have a lasting impact on your SEO:

• Page Speed – Improve your code, increase your hardware, etc.
• Better Onsite Content
• Usability

These three factors will have a lasting impact on your SEO during 2012 and beyond.

Get Your Strategy Together

Successful internet marketing campaigns have one thing in common: Comprehensive strategies. Today’s marketplace makes it extremely difficult to compete in one area of internet marketing without complimenting that work in several other areas. For example, why invest in search engine optimization if you don’t have a quality website to convert the traffic to leads or sales? Why invest in a mobile app if you aren’t going to optimize the listing to generate a high volume of downloads? These examples show how a comprehensive strategy to internet marketing is the best approach for future success.

Fruition.net has been successful in this comprehensive approach by staying at the forefront of each individual strategy. At the core of these strategies is a collection of goals and key indicators we use to monitor, adjust, and track performance. Below you will find a few of the most important goals for each area of internet marketing.

Comprehensive Internet Marketing Strategies

Search Engine Optimization
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is the process of optimizing your website with the end goal of improving your ranking on the major search engines. Here are the goals and key indicators you should be tracking to evaluate the success of your SEO campaign:

Read Frution’s Tips for SEO/SEM Domination »

This is a guest blog from Librato about Silverline. Silverline gives detailed information, presented in graphical form, on the actual usage of processor, memory and storage and network bandwidth at the application level. It also provides reliable estimates of application resource “demand,” which allows you to identify resource constraints as a potential source of performance issues and helps with capacity planning.

The Missing Link in Managing Cloud-Hosted Applications

Would you agree that one of the factors impacting the Quality of Service delivered by your applications is the availability of resources required for their execution? If you do, then you may wonder – as I do – why there aren’t more tools available to help you monitor and manage application resource consumption.

DevOps and operations teams use Cloud Resource Monitoring to keep track of the health and utilization of cloud resources, Real User Monitoring to ensure that their users experience the Quality of Service they expect, and Application Performance Management to find and fix performance issues in their applications.

What’s often missing is the ability to:

• Monitor and manage the use of resources at application level
• Ensure availability of resources
• Help in root cause analysis
• Improve resource utilization
• Do better capacity planning

Our Silverline Application Resource Management service fills this void by providing you detailed, application level data on the consumption of server resources (processor, memory, disk I/O and network I/O) and on the “demand” for these resources (i.e. how much of each resource an application would use if not restricted by resource availability). You can use this information to detect sudden changes and unusual patterns in resource consumption, identify situations in which applications are starved for resources, and to do capacity planning.

Silverline also allows you to guarantee availability of resources for individual applications or groups of applications, by setting resource quota. It guarantees that an application always receives resources up to its quota if it needs them but lets other applications use resources while it doesn’t need them. This makes it possible to run multiple applications on a server instance and guarantee that they will not interfere with each other, while at the same time improving the utilization of resources. It also allows you to make sure that critical applications (e.g. for collecting diagnostic data) are never starved for resources.

As a special case, you can use quota to let background workloads “harvest” spare resources: Simply set their resource quota to zero and they will only use resources not required by higher priority applications.

Silverline’s event handling feature allows you to set thresholds on resource consumption that can be used to send alarms or initiate automated actions. This allows you to receive early indications of problems like when an application’s resource consumption is exceeding normal levels or there is a significant gap between its resource use and resource demand. You can also take automated actions like killing rogue applications that consume too many resources.

If you’re looking for ways to improve the performance and availability of your SaaS or PaaS solution or to improve the utilization of your Softlayer cloud resources, give Silverline a try.

-Fred van den Bosch, Librato

We are witnessing a fundamental shift in the IT industry. It is forever changing the way technology is delivered and consumed. The pay-as-you-go model for everything you need in IT is shattering the old computing paradigms, from software licensing models and hardware refresh cycles to budgeting operating costs. This change is bringing about more control and transparency to users while accelerating the commoditization of IT by making it easily available through a new model.

This new model comes in three major “flavors”: Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS), Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) and Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) solutions. We incorporate and enable all three by offering a unified, fully automated platform to enable greater customer control over their IT environments. The key tenants of this emerging model for SoftLayer are innovation, empowerment, automation and integration. Here’s how we deliver against these four key tenants.

Innovation: We want to lead the industry by offering best of breed and proprietary cloud, dedicated, and managed hosting solutions, based on our own intellectual property. Currently, we have more than 252,000 hours invested and 2.6 million lines of code developed around these solutions. Customers can take charge of every aspect of their IT operations (servers, storage, networking & services) through our fully automated platform. Our Customer Portal and fully featured APIs give customer more control by providing direct access to more than 100 back-end systems and activities — every aspect of IT operations can be managed.

Empowerment: We turn IT operations into a predictable fixed cost. Customers can stay focused on achieving their business goals, not managing IT infrastructure. We offer expert planning and support from a certified, 24/7 support staff. Customers can deploy and scale when they want with one-day and on-demand automated provisioning. They can keep it as long (or short) as needed, with monthly contracts. In addition, customers can choose what they want to manage and what they don’t, with the ability to have hybrid IT self-managed and managed environments. This speaks to the flexibility of our platform!

Automation: This is an area that makes SoftLayer stand out from the pack. We automate deployment and management of all services, accelerating provisioning time, streamlining administrative tasks, and making it all on-demand, every day and night. With automation that mitigates the risk for human error, comprehensive security practices and options, and a 24/7 team of certified engineers, we provide greater stability, a 100% Uptime Guarantee, and around the clock support for any issues or service.

Integration: This is the final ingredient to making it ALL work. We seamlessly integrate hardware, software, and networking into a unified service, all conveniently controlled through our easy-to-use Customer Portal and robust APIs. We provide full information, full-time through our Customer Portal and APIs, for every service we provide; there is no data about a system that we keep from our customers, from usage statistics to network performance and beyond. We have complete transparency.

These four key tenets are what set us apart. When SoftLayer started back in 2005, the team’s goal was not to be Go Daddy on steroids. We set our sights on being the de facto platform for mainstream businesses to run all their IT operations. This means the complete gamut of applications and workloads with no compromise of performance, security, reliability and access. We are entering into a new IT era, where “connected everything” is the norm. It reminds me of the old phrase “the network is the computer” from Sun Microsystems’ slogan. We have the foundation in place, which will make for an unforgettable journey. Let us know what you think.

-@gkdog

This is a guest blog from Dave Jilk of Standing Cloud, a SoftLayer Tech Marketplace Partner specializing in automating cloud application deployment and streamlining management.

Standing Cloud’s Application Layer for the SoftLayer Cloud

When we first came across the SoftLayer Cloud, we were impressed by the breadth of what it allowed the user to do through a web browser. Beyond the basic infrastructure capabilities of provisioning servers and storage (that you can find from other providers), the SoftLayer console and API allow full access to the networking, security, and server console capabilities of the system. It’s as though you can take over the mind of a network administrator and have him or her do your bidding.

Read the rest of Dave’s Guest Blog! »

So far in 2009, there’s been a fair amount of discussion pro and con regarding the financial benefits (or lack thereof) of cloud computing. It’s very reminiscent of the whole “do-it-yourself” or “outsource it” debate. Blog posts like this and articles like this are samples of the recent debate.

One thing I have not yet seen or heard discussed regarding cloud computing is the concept of EVA, or Economic Value Added. Let me add at this point that EVA is a registered service mark of EVA Dimensions LLC and of Stern Stewart & Co. It is the concept of economic income instead of accounting income. SoftLayer subscribes to software from EVA Dimensions LLC. Get more info here.

For you to buy into the premise of this post, you’ll have to be sold on EVA as a valuable metric. Bottom line, EVA cleans up the distortions of GAAP and aligns all areas of the business so that more EVA is always better than less EVA. Most other metrics when pushed to extremes can actually harm a business, but not EVA. Yes, even bottom line GAAP net income when pushed to an extreme can harm a business. (How that can happen is fodder for another blog post.) Several books have been written about EVA and its benefits, so that’s too much to write about in this post. This is a good summary link, and for more info you can Google it on your own. And if you do Google it on your own, be warned that you may have to wade through links regarding Eva Longoria and/or Eva Mendes .

Part of the Cloud computing debate revolves around “capex vs. opex.” Specifically, this involves paying for IT infrastructure yourself using capital expenditures (“capex”) or employing Cloud computing and buying IT infrastructure with operating expenditures (“opex”). Geva Perry recently said, “There is no reason to think that there is a financial benefit to making an OpEx expense vs. CapEx expense. Period.” I disagree. When you look at this in terms of EVA, whether you use capex or opex can make a big difference in creating value for your business.

Let’s look at the effect of switching capex to opex on EVA. Coca-Cola is a company that employs EVA. Years ago, they decided to ship their beverage concentrate in single-use cardboard containers instead of reusable stainless steel. This made GAAP measures worse – profit and profit margins actually went down. But EVA went up by making the move from capex to opex. How can this be? Grab something caffeinated and check out some numbers here if you dare.

OK, that’s all fine. But how would shifting IT spending from capex to opex affect EVA? Glad you asked. Last summer, I modeled some full-fledged financials to illustrate financial benefits of outsourcing IT vs. doing it yourself. I’ve taken those and added the EVA calcs to them. Take another swig of caffeine and check them out here and here.

Assuming that EVA is a worthwhile metric (and I think it is), moving capex to opex is possibly a very good financial decision. Any questions? As always, your mileage may vary. Model carefully!

Hi! I’m George, one of the newest additions to the SoftLayer team. I joined the company for a few reasons:

1. The People – one of the best teams that I have ever met, and now, have the pleasure of working with
2. Vision – as someone recently said, how often do you get a chance for a “do over” without being Bill Murray in Groundhog Day?
3. Industry – how cool is it to be able to play with new technology and help shape the way people will do business
4. Acronyms and Buzzwords – as anyone that has worked in the telecom or technology industries can attest, this is the best place to be if you want to assemble new words based simply on the first letter of each.

Even before the Internet, (did that time really exist?), telecom hardware vendors, service providers and others in this little universe loved to create acronyms to make technology sound complicated. And of course, it created employment for thousands of people, which according to many of those techies, offered no real value, to help translate all of this into something that the consumer and investment community would buy… Welcome to the world of marketing in the Internet Age!

One thing that all of these people that came to be known as “Gurus” or an even buzzier buzzword – Evangelists – learned was to standardize on at least part of the acronym. Out of this concept was born:

• _AN (G, L, M, S, W)
• _EO (G, L, VL, S)
• _DSL (H, A, S, V)
• _SP (A, M, S)
• _2_ (B2B, B2C, P2P, M2M)

And each of these led to spin-off acronyms, like DSLAM, FRAD, ATM (the network not the cash machine), and my favorite – BE – which said a lot about what we were all doing back then. Acronyms became the patents of the original dot.com era (which we did not actually call Web 1.0, but more on that later). Of course, we also learned different naming systems and adjusted the English language to suit this purpose. Capitalization rules were thrown out along with the baby and bathwater. Capitals now appeared in the middle of all company names (yes, we even did it here…) and products thanks to another phenomenon of the era – the mandatory use of compound words.

Best of all, the digital age gave birth to an industry designed to make all of us look like techies – the acronym dictionary. Many of the generation that graduated into the telecom and Internet revolution of the early 1990s (including yours truly) built careers on the ability to string acronyms together to define the future of networking and ultimately, life. The common toolkit for all of us: Newton’s Telecom Dictionary and a fluffy cloud graphic from the MS Office clip art files – that was generally used by “advanced” gurus and not something to be thrown around by anyone with less than 12 months of experience in the dot.com trenches.

The web generation also taught the masses about versions and a fundamental rule in software: avoid buying version 1.0 and never launch a product called version 0. Even the web generation of telecom -mobile carriers – figured this one out. 3G has long been touted as the utopia of communications, but we had to get through 2.5G first. Never mind that v1 and v2 seemed to actually work. Thus, versioning took its rightful place at the left-hand of acronyms.
Jumping ahead a decade or so, we are now firmly in the grips of Web 2.0 and a new set of buzzwords and acronyms. If you don’t have an avatar living on a virtual street in a virtual world that spends virtual time stuck in virtual traffic driving to a virtual job, you probably are like me – part of the 1.0 generation. I too used an Apple IIe in school, but for me it was grade 10, not grade 1! And then there was the Newton which did not exactly fit into a palm, but that story will have to wait…

Like all things, buzzwords and acronyms have evolved as well. We are now using words like “grid”, “utility” and “always on” to reflect the way we are connected and work. And of course we all need to be Irish for more than 1 day per year. Don’t get me wrong. SoftLayer agrees that green is good. We have turned our facilities green in search of the “green”. Basically, we believe the best way to help our customers with access to technology on a real-time basis is by being as operationally efficient as possible. So, we have forced ourselves to be “green” in everything that we do. But, I digress…

My favorite current acronym root is “_aaS”. We can thank the failure of ASP (part of Web 1.5) and its lesser known cousin – AIP – to catch on for this latest iteration. The good news is that almost everything that we can think of can be called an “X as a Service”. Our internal top 10 list includes:

• Architecture as a Service
• Communication as a Service
• Data Center as a Service
• Hardware as a Service
• Network as a Service
• Platform as a Service
• Software as a Service
• Storage as a Service
• Virtualization as a Service
• Widgets as a Service (the favorite of our Starbucks fan)

But, don’t take my word for it. Whatever as a Service will be hard to avoid. Now that I think of it, MaaS (Monster as a Service) might be a big money maker around here.

I know we would all like to see Service as a Service, but that may need to wait until Web 4.0 when we have all been virtualized. Personally, I can’t wait to see what comes next. Given our place in the universe, I think that SoftLayer will have some influence and that’s why I’m here…

-@gkdog

I’m always on the lookout for drivers of the hosting industry. One of those drivers is “Software as a Service” (SaaS). After seeing this article where Gartner thinks that the SaaS market will basically triple over the next four years, I wondered if the SaaS movement was affecting me yet.

I then realized that the SaaS market had grabbed me in one very important area – personal finance software. I had become disenchanted with my common desktop personal finance package – it had a lot of features that I didn’t use and it didn’t do some things that I need. So I began searching for options and discovered Mvelopes.

Mvelopes is a SaaS solution. Rather than buy the software, you subscribe to it over the Web. Anywhere you have an Internet connection you can access it, even from a mobile phone. It logs into the web sites of your bank accounts, investment accounts, retirement accounts, credit card accounts, etc., and brings your account info together in a convenient one-screen view. It will download info from accounts that your old desktop software can’t touch. And because it’s a subscription, you never have to worry about keeping up with new versions, patches, etc. Every time you log on you have the latest production software updates at your disposal.

It doesn’t do asset allocation, portfolio analysis, technical analysis, stock screens or other fancy things that desktop personal finance software attempts to do. But it does planning and budgeting VERY well. This is what I need my personal financial software to do most of all, and my old software didn’t do this very well.

Probably the biggest hurdle in latching on to a SaaS solution like this is getting comfortable with placing the data security outside of your control since it doesn’t reside on your local machine. But when you realize that the vendor hosts the data at a secure data center and has far better data security, physical security, and network security than your spare upstairs bedroom office, it is possible to make the move.

According to Gartner, software consumers will quickly realize the simplicity of subscribing to secure hosted solutions that are accessible from anywhere. Naturally, these rapidly growing SaaS solutions need a home. Consequently, we at SoftLayer would like to ask these SaaS providers such as Mvelopes, “Who does your hosting?”

-Gary