Got The Enterprise Software Blues? Appliances to the Rescue

Rethinking IT
W H I T E P A P E R





Got The Enterprise Software Blues?
Appliances Come to the Rescue How Appliance-based Software Delivery (AbSD) provides a better alternative to both Software and Software as a Service (SaaS) Developed By: Marty Kacin, CTO, KACE
Got The Enterprise Software Blues? Appliances Come to the Rescue
TABLE OF CONTENTS Got The Enterprise Software Blues? Appliances Come to the Rescue How Appliance-based Software Delivery (AbSD) provides a better alternative to both Software and Software as a Service (SaaS ) Introduction ................................................................................................. 3 The Need for New Software Delivery Models................................................... 3 What about Software as a Service (SaaS)?...................................................... 4 The Case for Appliance-based Software Delivery (AbSD) .................................. 5 Appliance-based Software Delivery Defined......................................................................... 5 Appliance Benefits - End User Organizations....................................................................... 5 Appliance Benefits - Vendors............................................................................................. 7 Conclusion ................................................................................................... 7 Corporate Background................................................................................... 9

Copyright © 2006 KACE Networks, Inc. All rights reserved. KACE and KBOX are trademarks of KACE 2 Networks, Inc. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners. Got The Enterprise Software Blues? Appliances Come to the Rescue
Introduction Much has been written on the advantages of delivering software as a service (SaaS). In this "hosted" or "on-demand" model vendors ship no software to the customer and provide a fully hosted web-based solution accessible over the Internet. Customers benefit from reduced costs and complexity in that no hardware needs to be purchased and no software installation is required. Yet, SaaS has many disadvantages as well. SaaS faces issues such as system outages, unpredictable performance, community security, loss of data control and high costs over time. Recently, one of the downsides of software as a service has come to light in the highly publicized service outages that have plagued some major vendors. Appliance-based software delivery provides all the benefits of on-demand solutions, but with none of the drawbacks. Appliance-based software solutions bundle hardware and software into a pre-installed, pre-tuned bundle that can be simply plugged into a network for immediate use. Appliance-based solutions also provide a highly secure solution that is hardened against threats, and allows organizations to remain in firm possession of their data. Appliance-based solutions eliminate the need to procure hardware, install software or configure solutions for failover, backup, and recovery. Marty Kacin, the author of this whitepaper, is the Chief Technology Officer at KACE. Kacin is a 20 year veteran of the high tech software industry with broad experience in the IT, mobile, software development and medical computing fields. Marty Kacin co-founded AvantGo (formerly NASDAQ: AVGO, since acquired by Sybase). Prior to AvantGo, Kacin was a founding member and Vice President of Engineering of both Intranet Partners (an Internet technology engineering group) and the Stanford Center for Surgical Computing. KACE, a privately-held technology company, is the leader in IT automation appliances. KACE appliances are used to manage more than 45,000 Microsoft Windows computers in mid-market organizations around the world.

The Need for New Software Delivery Models Today's enterprise software market offers a variety of business automation solutions for companies of all sizes. Solutions include customer relationship management, messaging, enterprise resource management, IT management, business analytics and logistics. The need for these software solutions is unquestionable in today's fast paced and global business market. All sectors of today's global economy rely on software solutions to fuel 7x24 operations in both the back-office and ... [download for more]