Five things that IT personnel need to know about SaaS

SaaS has become a reality for IT departments of all types and sizes. CIOs and other IT leaders need tools to strictly manage a broad portfolio of SaaS applications, just as they manage internally installed software. Below are five things that every IT professional should know about SaaS.

1. SaaS has been deeply rooted in the hearts of the people.SaaS has gone far beyond the curious stage and hype cycle. Many companies are currently using several or even dozens of cloud services to run their own business processes.

Now, the challenge for the IT department is to figure out how to strictly manage the increasing number of product portfolios of SaaS applications, just like managing installed software.

2. There is an application for managing SaaS.Software vendors are providing more professional SaaS products to help CIOs manage their cloud applications. For example, Okta is a startup enterprise that provides a cloud-based identity management platform that allows users to register all SaaS applications in one place.

This application competes with Ping Identity and other vendors and with existing Identity management vendors such as CA technology companies. "I found a huge gap in the market that all cloud companies are trying to sell their services directly to enterprise users," said Todd McKinnon, CEO of Okta. I understand clearly that our company requires the Chief Information Officer to adapt to and manage all these applications.

3. This is not just a tool.R "Ray" Wang, CEO of market Research company Constellation Research, said SaaS governance includes more new management applications. Scenarios and user tasks are often missing. What you really need is to understand how to access information and then work based on that information.

4. Your user will thank you.Genomic Health, which develops cancer diagnostic reagents, has been actively applied to cloud applications. Up to now, 24 cloud applications have been applied. Ken Stineman, the company's senior manager for enterprise architecture and security, said the company is even transitioning to cloud-based ERP and SAP Business ByDesign.

Stineman said Genomic applied Okta and found it to be one of these few security plans that satisfied users. It makes access easier, removes all instant stickers, and helps us with compliance with regulations.

5. There is no turning back.In the long run, the chief information officers have understood the boundaries of their IT environments. This boundary is usually in the form of a secure data center or virtual private network. The emergence of cloud computing and mobile access has expanded the company's IT security environment. Stineman said that SaaS vendors have more work to do in terms of data encryption.

Stineman said that as Genomic considers new investments to SaaS vendors, we are conducting more systematic evaluations to ensure that these vendors can meet our goals, especially our security requirements.