With Software as a Service, Do You Need a Full-time Tech Support?

As more and more companies move their vital data and information into the cloud, it's becoming increasingly difficult to keep the systems running smoothly. More than ever, small businesses and other companies are turning to cloud computing to support their business needs, but cloud applications aren't perfect, and they do have their own share of working tech support that can help you patch things up and make sure all your data is secure. While cloud computing does help speed things up and improve efficiency, it doesn't allow for enough support from a third party.

The rise of cloud computing has really helped the business world keep up with technology, especially when it comes to business applications. Cloud computing has allowed many companies to work more cost-effectively and efficiently. In turn, many of these business apps have needed some sort of tech support in order to cope with the technology.

These business applications don't support each other, and they don't have the needed infrastructure to support the multi-user applications, which are required to run the online applications at low cost. Many organizations find cloud computing to be a great option, but then find that their applications are difficult to use on a daily basis. This can be frustrating since these applications don't "talk" to each other, and they expect all their data to be in one place, in a familiar location.

Tech Support for these multi-user applications in enterprise architecture must be able to provide the following services:

• Running applications - A good cloud computing platform is an enterprise-ready platform that can run anything from spreadsheets, desktop apps, virtual machines, etc.

• Creating data - For a true enterprise architecture, you need to have the infrastructure in place to ensure that data is managed, stored, and can be quickly and easily accessed, without the need to install and run the software.

• Managing backups - Backup applications provide a way to automate the backup process from a centralized location, and ensure that this data is stored in the most cost-effective manner, as well.

• Increasing performance - The business must have a clear understanding of how well it can run an application, and what performance can be expected from it in a virtualized environment.

• Monitoring and managing storage - An understanding of how much space is required and how much can be used efficiently is crucial to the applications, and must be available to the architecture for configuration.

• Government compliance - Helps to ensure that all government regulations are met and ensure the IT support is specifically designed to meet local, state, and national standards.

It's not just the IT industry that is affected by these cloud computing issues, though. Practitioners and employees, in general, are affected by how well a cloud computing platform aids them. High-performing applications make people's lives easier, and cloud computing provides the opportunity to get quality performance at a predictable cost. Unfortunately, there are issues with both the software and the platform, making them exciting, but also daunting.

Issues affecting software performance

The software performance problems that concern most people involve the issue of bandwidth. The software is split into many pieces and distributed across a server, each piece responsible for a separate task. Now imagine just one server. The power goes to one server, and its processing power is represented by the pieces that are connected to it.

Because the pieces are distributed across multiple servers, a performance issue may be affected by the inter contribution of a single server.

Another issue is Distribution, which is the methodologies offered by the pieces. These have to be managed efficiently because if not, they can bring the server to a halt. These issues also may slow the server down, due to the availability of the pieces, on a turnkey basis.

Issues affecting the platform

Because cloud applications are effectively "pointed-to-point" multipliers, reliability and maintainability don't usually come into play. In addition, the single shortfall in this kind of architecture creates numerous bottlenecks.

Issues affecting the system

There are many things that go wrong with SaaS, but the most common problems are infrastructure and connection issues. The failure of a connection between multiple points may bring down the system. The more shared files the system holds, the more bandwidth consumption is needed, which can slow down the application.

The failure of a service, or the compromise of security, may bring down the system. Businesses can lose their data because they can no longer rely on the system. These are exciting, high-risk endeavors.

The status of a critical business application is reported into a central hub, or in a secure electronic file. Businesses can monitor the progress of critical applications, and relay important information to the users.

Cloud application providers have already taken steps to ensure that business continuity and data integrity are protected. Now, they can take another step and ensure that business continuity is ensured.