Identity Management Blog | Symplified

Top 5 Challenges faced by a Cloud Vendor / SaaS Provider

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July 2009

Here are the top technical challenges:

1) Identity Management--How to avoid Identity Silos? Companies already have invested heavily in directory servers and tools to manage and provision/deprovision users and their accounts. Extending this to the cloud can be a challenge. Research cloud-based solutions before moving to the cloud.

 
2) Data Exchange--SaaS can introduce data issues ranging from Silos to multi-mastered data. In the absence of widely adopted standards, supporting enterprise needs is a challenge to SaaS vendors.
 
3) Security--Ensuring security that meets the needs of customers is a challenge for SaaS vendors. While implementation of best practices is not a huge challenge per se, many customers still believe SaaS to be inherently less secure (e.g., exposing privacy risks in multitenancy etc) and SaaS vendors must anticipate this concern and have real solutions in hand.
 
4) Audit and Compliance--The boundary for ownership and stewardship of data and transactions extends beyond the enterprise walls with the adoption of SaaS and so SaaS vendors must consider how to simplify compliance with the many rules and regs their customers must meet.
 
5) Operations--The success of every SaaS vendor rests on their ability to deliver services reliably and efficiently. From network and server response times to customer support, there are a range of challenges to SaaS vendors.
 
6) Customization--Every SaaS vendor must choose a tenancy model and feature set that serves their market and business plan. And be prepared for customer requests that go beyond their planned support of customization. Per-customer customization is costly and can unwind your business model. Not supporting customization can compromise market share. And architecting a solution (like Force.com) that enables customization within a standard framework is costly.

Coby Royer | Technical Product Director

Symplified | The Cloud Security Experts

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