GXS Insights

A World Without Version Numbers

By Rowland Archer, SVP & CTO, GXS

What version of your cell-phone provider are you running on? How about your power company? Odd questions to be sure, since these are services.... and yet, why do IT services need to be different? If the power and telecomm industries can undergo the amazing changes they have in the past decade without requiring me to replace my house, why can’t information technology? Can many of the IT services that we depend on exist in a world without upgrades and a world without version numbers?

Yes.

SaaS 2.0 is about providing business services from a SOA platform, without requiring customers to commit to monolithic sets of inflexible software modules. SaaS 2.0 services do not have version numbers, because customers are buying service features─not versions.

The need for a “2.0” is driven by the massive confusion about true Software as a Service versus hosting.  You cannot construct a SaaS offering by installing a piece of software and offering web access─that is not what it is about. True SaaS 2.0 is about provisioning services on demand, with the ultimate goal being near real time or, at least, as soon as the check clears. Doing this with current technology calls for dynamically scalable SOA infrastructure, where provisioning activities and managing capacity are discrete activities. Although SaaS 2.0 platforms like the GXS Trading Grid® require new servers and infrastructure from time to time, customers experience linear scalability (up and down), and usage-based cost models.

SaaS 2.0 leverages technology, but is really about meeting the demands of an accelerated business world that can no longer afford to wait for the next version.