Hybrid Cloud For Dummies

Hybrid Cloud Changes the Nature of SaaS

SaaS provides incredible value to customers, but in practice, SaaS is another element in a hybrid cloud world. Even if you plan to simply use a SaaS service to fill one business need, we expect that you will have more and more of a need to connect systems. The SaaS application your marketing department needs now feeds into your on-premises ERP, and the data is used in your private cloud for analytics, while a development team needs the data on Amazon’s EC2 for testing and so on.

We think you see where this is going. As we mention earlier, SaaS can be a complex element in a hybrid cloud. As the market evolves, more SaaS providers will want their applications to work together. Companies will need their SaaS applications to be able to communicate with the applications they have on- premises. All this will have to be secured and monitored. Standards will become ever more important in order for this ecosystem to expand, grow, and succeed. The hybrid cloud is a brave new world. We talk much more about all these factors in Chapters 11, 12, 15, and 18.