Four major differences between SaaS, PaaS, and cloud computing

Over the past one or two years, SaaS (software as a service), PaaS (Platform-service), cloud computing, these three concepts have been hot-fried in the software world. At first glance, there are many similarities between the three, such as the use of the Internet to provide related services or applications, are based on the rental model, and also pay on demand.

But under the surface of prosperity, from a technical point of view, what are the differences between these concepts? Which vendors are providing relevant technology? What are the specific products? Many users of this is foggy, the choice can not be.

We interviewed some representatives of the industry and experts, hoping to help users solve these puzzles.

The concept of fine comparison

Before the interview, Internet reporters first looked at Wikipedia. For SaaS, Wikipedia is defined as: Software as a service abbreviation, Chinese translation is software that is services, is a new software application Mode rising in the early 21st century; cloud computing on Wikipedia explains: Cloud computing is a kind of distributed computing technology, The most basic concept is to automatically split the huge computing process into countless smaller subroutines through the network, and then send the processing results back to the users by the large system composed of many servers after searching, calculating and analyzing. PAAs has no relevant content on Wikipedia.

The definition of Wikipedia is obviously a bit too general, although simple comparison is not our main goal, but it is necessary to summarize some of the current industry mainstream views, so that readers can make a simple distinction.

For SaaS Awareness, the industry is basically agreeing that SaaS is delivering software as a service. PAAs is a concept derived on the basis of SaaS, which can be interpreted as providing "platform as a service".

CCW Information deputy General Manager Cao Kaibin's view may help us deepen our understanding, and he believes that PAAs and SaaS are both focused on services and demand for vendor service capabilities, while cloud computing is more focused on computing resource sharing.

So, which of these three concepts is bigger?

Zhu Bun, director of cloud computing at IBM's Greater China region, insists that cloud computing can encompass the concepts of PAAs and SaaS. She divides cloud computing into three tiers, the bottom of which is the infrastructure, including hardware, servers and other physical resources; the second tier is the platform; the top tier is the application and service, which is SaaS. Perhaps because of the recent popularity of cloud computing, this view is getting more and more accepted. Of course, opponents are shortage. Zhang Bin, general manager of Beijing China Enterprise Open Source Information Technology Co., believes that it is meaningless to have SaaS and PAAs attributed to cloud computing, and there are many differences between them.

These two opposing views may be due to different perspectives on cloud computing. Like IBM China Software Development Center chief architect Mao, cloud computing can be understood from the narrow and broad two levels, the narrow sense of cloud computing refers to the use of the network to provide users with server, storage and other network resources, and PAAs, SaaS is the concept of parallel And IBM's so-called cloud computing is understood from a broad perspective, so it seems to be all-encompassing.

Differentiation of products to see technical differences

From a product standpoint, it's easier to discern the difference between SaaS, PAAs, and cloud computing.

Cao Kaibin Introduction, a major feature of SaaS applications is the direct targeting of the ultimate enterprise user. Salesforce is one of the most successful enterprises in the SaaS domain, and its web-based CRM solution is a typical SaaS product that can be used for sales, service, marketing, and call center operations. Now, many enterprises in China begin to imitate or copy salesforce mode. 800 Guest Software Technology Co., Ltd. is one of the earliest companies to do SaaS business, many people see them as Salesforce in the domestic most successful replicator. Li, senior deputy general manager of the company, does not reject the idea, he said in an interview with the network network reporters that they and Saleforce products similar to the high, localized work done well, many of their users are in contact with Salesforce products abroad, After returning to the 800 customers are interested in the introduction of CRM.

In a way, PAAs is an inevitable consequence of the development of SaaS models. China Enterprise Open source Zhang Bin believes that the emergence of PAAs, SaaS Enterprises want to be a leading enterprise of an effort and try. Compared with SaaS, PAAs has a higher demand for providers, and higher requirements for development languages, development environments, development tools, etc. SaaS products are generally final applications that users can use, while PAAs is typically for software developers who develop their own SaaS products or applications on the online development platform provided by PAAs vendors. Because PAAs requirements are higher, there are not many vendors currently capable of providing PAAs platforms, force.com of Saleforce, Google Apps Engine, and 800APP of 800 customers are typical PAAs platform products. According to Zhang Bin, China Enterprise Open Source also has the ability to provide PAAs platform.

With the rapid warming of cloud computing, Amazon, Google, IBM, Microsoft and other IT giants have launched the cloud-related products. Amazon uses flexible computing Clouds (EC2) and simple storage services (S3) to provide computing and storage services for businesses, charging services including storage servers, bandwidth, CPU resources, and monthly fees. In November 2007, IBM launched the Blue Cloud, which included a series of cloud computing products, so that the calculations were not confined to the local area, and the data centers could be run in a similar Internet environment by architecting a distributed, globally accessible resource structure. Microsoft also launched the Azure cloud service platform last October, including the Windows Azure;microsoft SQL database service, Microsoft. NET services, the primary goal is to provide a platform for developers to help develop applications that run on cloud servers, data centers, the Web, and PCs.

Forms: SaaS, PaaS, cloud computing major vendors and Representative products:

Technical category

On behalf of the manufacturer name

Main products

function

SaaS

Salesforce

Salesforce CRM

Can be used for sales, service, marketing and call center operations

800 Guest

800APP CRM

CRM as the core, set invoicing, finance, Simple OA in one, including: partnership management, online general financial system, online standard invoicing system and other standardized modules

NetSuite

NetSuite OneWorld (online ERP)

Provides multiple levels of comprehensive reporting, global order management, real-time management, and automated financial functions to reduce costs and simplify tax administration

China Enterprises Open Source

Enterprise Management, E-commerce, industry portals, etc.

To small and medium-sized enterprises "on demand service, on demand and change", can greatly reduce the cost and risk of SME informatization

PaaS

Salesforce

Force.com

You can build and run any application and provide an enterprise-class WEB application on demand without the cost of deploying the infrastructure.

Google

Google Apps Engine

Build and run your own Web applications on Google's infrastructure without having to maintain servers

800 Guest

800APP

Using this development platform, users can develop any enterprise management software, including CRM, OA, HR, SCM, invoicing management and so on, without the need to use other software development tools and run online immediately.

Cloud

Amazon

EC2 (Elastic Compute Cloud, Flexible computing Cloud), S3 (simple Storage service, easy storage services)

Provides computing and storage services for the enterprise, charging service items including storage servers, bandwidth, CPU resources, and monthly rental costs

IBM Inc.

Lan Yun (Blue Cloud)

So that the calculation is not limited to the local, through the architecture of a distributed, globally accessible resource structure, so that the data center in an environment similar to the Internet to run the calculation.

Microsoft Corp.

Azure

Includes Windows Azure, Microsoft SQL database services, Microsoft. NET services, and to help develop applications that run on cloud servers, data centers, the web, and PCs

Standard Contest

And the concept of the speculation in stark contrast is that SaaS, PaaS, Cloud computing, the three are currently in the initial stage of development, this is a network of reporters in the process of interview, respondents are relatively more agree with.

It is precisely because of the initial development, the focus on standards is more important, or will affect the future development of these technologies, and even determine the fate of some manufacturers. As with the document standards of the previous period, even though NI and others have called for support for our country's own document standards, because Microsoft's Office products have become a monopoly, its documentation standards have become a fact standard. Although many vendors objected, they still had to make their products compatible with Microsoft Office products.

As with the original document standards, for SaaS, PaaS, Cloud computing technology, is the first to develop a broad industry-wide adherence to standards to standardize the market? Or do you have the standard of fact to speak? The industry now has a lot of controversy.

China Enterprise Open Source is the long Wind union member unit, they have joined 13 other member enterprises within the Alliance to form "The Internet Information Service Working Group", now is cooperating with the National Standard Committee, attempts to plan and develop the SaaS industry related standards and the specification. Zhang Bin believes that simple SaaS applications are not very meaningful to users because they cannot integrate well with the enterprise's existing systems. With the development of SaaS, it becomes more common for users to use SaaS applications from different vendors, and if there are uniform standards for interfaces and data specifications, users can easily import and export data between different systems. Zhang bin revealed that they have developed a SaaS industry 6 technical standards, including the "Software services shipped English data specification", "Software services Operating Interface Specification" and other standards of strong feasibility, they plan to implement these norms in the alliance, if the operation effect of good words and then spread out.

However, 800 guest companies Li have different views on this. In his view, the standards set by many countries often do not work well, or they are shelved or outright aborted. The principle of 800 is to follow the industry leader, that is, to follow the so-called factual standards. From the introduction of an online CRM system similar to Salesforce CRM to the introduction of the first PAAs platform in China (only a few months later than the Salesforce launch of the force.com PAAs platform), 800 of customers always uphold this principle. The so-called one step lead, step by step lead, now many software vendors begin to develop on their PAAs platform, and integrate with them. The idea of 800 passengers is also a good mode of development.

By contrast, cloud computing standards seem to be harder to form. Perhaps because the current market is the main cloud manufacturers are some it giants, so it is inevitable to say that each other is in the Gongchenglvede stage, the fact that the standard has not been formed, and we sit down together to study the development of industry standards, it seems unlikely. This is hard for users, the market of cloud computing products and services vary widely, they do not know how to choose when to do. However, Zhu Bunzhi said in an interview with the Internet network, IBM intends to join other vendors to build the relevant standards of cloud computing (Cloud standards), I hope no matter what manufacturers can be "what the cloud is, how the future development" and so there is a consensus, This allows users to be able to migrate naturally between different cloud computing platforms without being controlled by a single vendor.

What will happen in the future?

The industry also has a different understanding of how the three technologies of PAAs, SaaS and cloud computing will evolve in the future.

Although it started as a SaaS, 800 of customers did not define themselves as pure SaaS vendors, and after a certain degree of success in SaaS and PAAs business, they began to itch for cloud computing. Li is a practical person, he does not reject some popular concepts, on the contrary, also show great interest in cloud computing, and hope that 800 of the future business can also be like cloud computing closer.

Zhang Bin is more rigorous, although the Chinese enterprise open source also has the ability to provide cloud computing, virtualization technology, the basic platform and so on are ready, but Zhang Bin is not keen to join cloud computing the ranks. He argues that SaaS, PAAs and cloud computing are all well developed independently, while also giving SaaS more expectation that the technology will replace traditional software and that they are working to build an ecosystem of SaaS industries.

CCW's view of information Cao Kaibin is strategically, and he feels that SaaS, PAAs and cloud computing are not either an either-or relationship, but rather a reference to each other. The development of SaaS has spawned the need for PAAs, and the advent of PAAs can make SaaS more sophisticated, and the combination of cloud computing with SaaS and PAAs may make the industry chain more complete. For example, many SaaS vendors are currently renting telecom or mobile rooms as their data centers, but this traditional model has a disadvantage, that is, inflexible. When SaaS users expand dramatically, data centers do not respond in a timely fashion, and if SaaS vendors use cloud computing vendors to provide network resources, the problem can be better addressed.

Cao Kaibin predicts that in about 2015 years, the market, composed of SaaS, PaaS, and cloud computing, will gradually mature and the blueprint for collaboration between vendors offering different technologies will be presented.