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SaaS: Buy vs. Build Solved Software as a Service (SaaS) empowers your company to focus on what you know best… your products & services, your initiatives, and your market growth. SaaS allows us to focus on what we know best, developing and maintaining award winning, innovative, enterprise-level software. While we can work with your IT department, our solution usually best integrates with marketing and business development initiatives, resulting in:
Organizations are often faced with a Buy vs. Build problem when defining web-based software related endeavors. The most important issue is when you decide to build a solution, you become a software company! Organizations often overlook extremely important issues when exploring solution possibilities, such as:
1. How will scalability be addressed? Building scalable software requires a business vision and software architecture design with scalability in mind from its genesis. It requires a determined strategy to be scalable at every level of every feature and every function of the software. While building a software solution “ad-hoc” can incorporate a strategy for scalability, the design process will be lengthened to adopt flexible methodologies at the architecture level. Most companies will be tempted to design and develop to meet the functional requirements with an intention of solving scalability at a later date. This strategy will present its own set of problems. As described above, “scalability” requires the ability to separate out specific software based functions to be distributed over additional systems, thus increasing the number of servers, processors, devices and storage repositories. When software is not developed from its outset to provide for such divisions, rapidly responding to growth needs is troublesome. By nature, software is a bundle of thousands of .txt pages comprised of hundreds of thousands of lines of code contained in hundreds of folders and directories. Between each function of the solution lies communication pathways with most functions affecting innumerable other functions. Separating one feature of the software to be run on a new, additional server after the code is already developed will invariably require scores of man hours of intense work and quite possibly break other parts of the solution. In “ad-hoc” development, there generally is not a “blueprint” for the software defining which parts of the millions of characters of code affect other parts of the code. This planning failure can result in a never-ending quagmire of searching for additional bugs and breaks that have been created as a result of the “scalability fix”. For example, isolating image rendering so that the photo image rendering routine can be performed on an independent “rendering” server, to increase rendering speeds and decrease overall system overhead effects every part of the customer experience. Pictures are stored in the data repository. Pointers are created and stored in the database. Photos are presented throughout the community. Photos will contain their own set of metadata or reference pointers, which will be searchable during the customer’s use of the search engine. All of these “obviously apparent” meta-functions require in aggregate over a hundred sub-routines. Each sub-routine will require adjusting due to the nature in the change of the workflow by sending the image from the upload work queue to the new server. If this was not thought out during development as a strategy for the future, this will take perhaps weeks to make this single productivity adjustment. Scalable solutions architect “modularity” at the function level of the software. Sub-routines are contained within the module making it simple to separate the routine from the rest of the software by simply adjusting the entry and destination file paths. Configurable solutions that are designed to be installed in innumerable environments present a better foundation from which to accomplish scalability. 360Hubs has designed its software with the purpose of installing it over and over again in disparate environments. 360Hubs presents the only such solution on the marketplace. Currently, there is no other company providing an Affinity Hub solution that is designed to be configurable. Further, the 360Affinity Hub solution is designed to be modular. 360Hubs has developed its product with scalability in mind. The company understands the need to add additional processors, web-servers, etc. on an ad hoc basis. As such, the company has maintained a “modular” approach to software development. The 360Affinity Hub solution is comprised of a single core services server solution with over 40 modules. Each module can be independently distributed across a network of servers to improve performance and reduce overall system overhead. This method will enable Your Company to move forward in confidence knowing that the software behind our company is prepared to grow with our company.
2. Who will maintain & upgrade the software in a changing marketplace to insure interoperability with browsers and operating systems? And, who will support the software when “bugs” / “breaks” occur or patches are required? How will changes in Internet security be addressed? A “one-off” solution built only for us will require a “one-off” solution for addressing the maintenance issue. It will require that a set of developers be set aside to specifically work on our solution. This will run the potential of us being tied to a specific development firm with no ability to support ourselves in the future. Because of the “hostage” like environment, we will be bound to pay our development firm any rate demanded to continually fix “bugs” that arise out of the nature of the ever-changing environment in which our software will be used. Further, because an ad-hoc development lacks a business strategy that includes a regular maintenance cycle, these changes will take longer to deploy and be more costly. This lack of strategy will run the risk of sacrificing our customer’s experience while we troubleshoot issues and determine an upgrade path and implementation strategy. Additionally, the developers used will probably not be as familiar with our specific solution because they are used on several “projects” resulting in a longer cycle to remedy. 360Hubs is in the “packaged” software business. Our business is to develop and maintain a single product for many customers. Their entire development effort revolves around their only product, the 360Affinity Hub solution. As such, they offer an annual maintenance and support plan that includes:
Because 360Hubs is providing its software to a multiplicity of other customers, they are afforded the benefit of exposure to innumerable technology environments and use scenarios. This allows 360Hubs to maintain an annual “major” release schedule for its software coupled with intermittent “critical” patches throughout the year. As part of the maintenance plan, 360 will, provide the software upgrades and patches for as long as we remain on the maintenance plan. The maintenance is only 18% annually of the cost of the software licenses. Further, 360Hubs will provide technical support related to the software as part of the annual maintenance. If for any reason the software breaks or does not work or if we simply need help understanding how to accomplish a certain function within the environment, 360Solutions will be available 24/7. Should the software contain a bug or break, 360 will fix it as part of the annual maintenance plan. The same is true concerning Internet Security. The Internet is one of the most vulnerable environments in the world concerning security. Viruses, Trojans, etc. are released into the marketplace daily. Additionally, hackers are continually attempting to vandalize online businesses or steal customer and business information. Internet security is a specialized business. Maintaining an ad-hoc development approach will create a slow response time to such threats. Because 360Hubs is in the packaged software business they are in the strongest position to meet this need. Their product is exposed to many environments. They have the advantage of problem or threat reporting from many customers and they can distribute the cost of threat protection across many customers. This allows them to more rapidly respond to and better prepare for changing security needs. Finally, 360Hubs believes in good engineering practices. 360Hubs recommends that we maintain a second “development” environment that mirrors our current environment. They provide this additional software license at no additional cost. This provides an environment in which programmatic changes can be made and tested prior to deployment in production. Further, it will allow Your Company to try new community tools and enhancements and determine the proper configuration prior to releasing it to the community. Taking advantage of the 360Hubs annual maintenance plan will provide Your Company with the assurance of knowing that we have a business partner to handle the part of our business that is not our business by nature, software development. This will free up Your Company to focus on its core business strategy of providing content and building customer relationships. Further because the 360Affinity Hub solution is built using open source code, should we ever make the decision to bring the software maintenance and upgrade process in-house, we are free to do so and discontinue paying the annual support fees. Finally, the same is true should 360Hubs “go-away” as a vendor. You will have the freedom of possessing the “code” and hiring your own developers. Because of its open source nature, you are in the safest position we can be in.
3. Who will maintain a development roadmap for the features & functions of our solution? Product Development is critical in any business. In the Internet business, it is the difference between living and dying. Will you continue to be a visionary or will you be reactive? Online customers do not follow the reactionist. Online customers are the most fickle of all customers. It is a weak relationship. When a website has a feature or a function that is considered to be “new” or “hot”, online customers “jump.” Remaining on the cutting-edge is very important. There is no way that an ad-hoc development house can remain engaged enough in the marketplace to spot coming trends early. Further, an ad-hoc development house is not in the business, by nature, of online community. This means that any product enhancements or improvements must be directed by Your Company. You are in the fundraising business, not the Internet development business. While you desire a business partner that can respond to your development requests, you need a business partner that brings new ideas and concepts to us. 360Hubs developed the concept of repeatable, deployable, configurable Affinity Hub software for business providers. Because this is all we do, we are continually culling the marketplace for coming trends. Further, we are developing new community tools of their own. We focus on leading development efforts concerning online community. Equally important is the nature of development. Because the 360Affinity Hub solution is modularly-based, new features and functions can easily be added to the environment without a major design and development effort. 360Hubs will keep your product offering improving and growing for your customers over time. We will remain engaged in the world of software development so that you can focus on your core business practice, raising money.
4. How will your company remain engaged concerning best practices pertaining to the deployment and use of the software? “Industry Best Practices” are simply points of relevance that cannot be addressed by ad-hoc development. Packaged solution providers maintain a customer-base that is using the same solution. Each company is using the software differently to accomplish varying business objectives; however, they are all using the same software. 360Hubs will maintain an active “User Group”. The User Group enables 360Affinity Hub users to interact with one another as a community of users. This practice allows Affinity Hub owners to learn from one another. This will provide a mechanism by which Affinity Hub administrators can easily discuss what deployment methodologies are providing the greatest result for marketing, customer service, product development, etc. Further 360Hubs uses the aggregate of this marketplace of ideas to determine development strategies. 360Hubs will sponsor open discussions concerning:
As Your Company continues to grow, taking advantage of the lessons learned by the marketplace would best enable us to remain viable and develop our continued growth strategies. Because 360Hubs is the market leader concerning Affinity Hub technology their business practice will best enable Your Company to have the knowledge necessary to implement industry best practices and grow your company.
5. What is the quickest route to market? “Time to Market” is one of the most critical reasons to select a packaged solution over ad-hoc development. We have developed and maintain over 50 unique features and functions, for example, ecommerce, photo gallery management, contests, unique customer web-page content management and much, much more. We are also constantly developing new features and functions as our platform and the market evolve. Re-inventing the wheel is rarely recommended. To do so requires duplicating design and development efforts that have already been accomplished by someone else. 360Hubs is the only company that offers a configurable Affinity Hub solution to businesses. 360Hubs has already developed over 40 modules that can be independently installed and configured on the 360Affinity Hub Core Services platform. 360Hubs has over 3 years invested in developing these modules. |
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