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Need for SaaS abstractions

Developing software as a service (SaaS) in today's cloud environment can be compared to creating an application for an operating system (OS). Just as developers don't concern themselves with the intricacies of CPU scheduling or memory management when writing applications for Windows or Linux, similar abstractions are needed in the cloud.

The SaaS Revolution: Transforming Software Delivery Forever

Innovation is the heartbeat of the technology industry, a relentless pursuit to deliver greater value and meet evolving customer needs.

In information technology, hardware innovations paved the way, providing the computational power needed for software development. However, the coupling of hardware and software limited customization, time to distribute, cost of delivery, and customer experience. With the introduction of the Operating System (OS), software became independent of hardware. This not only tackled distribution challenges but also fueled innovation in the software industry, giving rise to various applications like Oracle databases, the Microsoft Office Suite, Adobe Photoshop, and SAP ERP.

Introducing Omnistrate Platform

As we contemplated building the SaaS platform, we divided the requirements into 5 packages. If you are building a SaaS from scratch, you will likely need all the layers.

We also understand that some of you may have already started but are actively looking to accelerate your SaaS journey and scale with your current team better. Hence, we have divided the platform into 5 packages to make it easy to integrate and enable/disable specific pieces:

What is SaaS Control Plane?

I was among the authors at AWS who pioneered the first SaaS control plane back in 2009, laying the groundwork for many SaaS offerings both within and beyond AWS. Crafting the SaaS control plane, we delved deep into fundamental questions:

Why we built Omnistrate?

We witness the proliferation of SaaS solutions daily — from AI applications like Private ChatGPT and infrastructure services like Snowflake, to content management systems such as WordPress, and HR management systems like Workday. The spectrum extends to customer support tools like Zendesk, customer engagement platforms like Salesforce, and collaboration solutions like Zoom, Slack, and Google Workspace. SaaS has become the prevailing distribution model in today’s software landscape and is poised to define the future of software delivery.

A 200 billion dollar business that you cannot ignore

A business generating 200 billion dollars per year, cannot be ignored.

What kind of business are we talking about? SaaS.

Anyone offering digitally accessible software services is offering them as a SaaS.

Ok but, what is this “SaaS”?

SaaS stands for Software as a service and is the dominant software distribution model in today’s tech landscape. A typical setup in which a cloud provider is leveraged to host an application and makes it available to users exposing the service globally.

These are the main reasons why you should go for SaaS.

Lifecycle Management and Infrastructure Cleanup: The Overlooked Challenge of Efficiently Decommissioning Resources

In today's fast-paced world of cloud computing, the importance of full lifecycle management in cloud infrastructure cannot be overstated. Many organizations are quick to provision resources in cloud platforms like AWS, GCP, and Azure, but all too often, the critical decommissioning phase is overlooked. This oversight carries both financial and security implications that can be detrimental to a company's bottom line and data integrity.

Simplifying Multi-Cloud, Multi-Tenant SaaS Deployments with Infrastructure as Code (IaC)

The cloud landscape has evolved significantly in recent years, moving businesses beyond the confines of single cloud providers. Enterprises are increasingly embracing multi-cloud strategies to leverage the strengths of various cloud platforms. As they journey into this multi-cloud world, the intricacies of managing their infrastructure through Infrastructure as Code (IaC) become apparent, especially in the context of Software as a Service (SaaS) platforms operating in multi-tenant environments. In this blog post, we will explore the rise of multi-cloud deployments, the role of IaC as the glue that holds it together, the unique challenges posed by SaaS in a multi-cloud world, and best practices and solutions to navigate these complex scenarios.

Day 2 Operations - SaaS Maintenance

In my previous posts, I have covered what it takes to build a SaaS Control Plane: [Capabilities][Billing][Provisioning][Scaling][High Availability][Monitoring]. In this post, we will cover some of the challenges in operating a SaaS service.

I’ve likely performed thousands of operational tasks during my career, but one sticks out clearly for me over a decade after I performed it. It was a major version upgrade of a decently-large Cassandra cluster while I was working at Signal, with between 8 and 64 nodes in each of 4 separate geographic regions in AWS - two in the US, one in Europe, and one in Japan. I think in total the cluster had about 160 nodes.

The upgrade included a data format change, which meant each node had to go through a lengthy step-by-step process including a drain, clean shutdown, data migration, software upgrade, startup, re-sync, and finally after passing health checks I could do the next node that shared the same token space. Nodes which didn’t share the same token space could in theory be upgraded at the same time, but we had to keep a specific percentage of nodes working in each region at the same time to maintain operational functionality.

SaaS Capabilities - What Does it Really Entail?

What does it really mean for software to be available as a service? Sure, there are plenty of dry definitions out there, but I think a lot of us like to adhere to the ideology of “I know it when I see it” even if we wouldn’t readily admit it. What I’d like to explore in this post is the makeup of what I personally would consider to be the table stakes features of a modern SaaS; and spend a bit of extra time going over the areas which you’re probably far more likely to gloss over. If you think I’ve missed anything, be sure to leave your thoughts in the comments below!