Serving science
On demand software has been a great success in other industries, and data
management providers are beginning to follow suit. Greg Blackman investigates the
growing trend of providing data management solutions as software as a service
are as a service
tw
T
he rise of Salesforce.com, from an The SaaS approach promises to alleviate ELN workspace without any contact with
apartment in San Francisco a decade some of the expense of an enterprise system the vendor. This is vastly different to an
of
ago to listing Fortune 500 companies on its by cutting out installation and maintenance enterprise set-up, which could take several
s
client portfolio, is one of the great success costs. SaaS solutions therefore provide months involving discussions between the
stories for the software as a service (SaaS) small companies that don’t have the vendor and the customer’s IT department.’
model of distribution. Allowing businesses resources for an enterprise solution access The flexibility is perfect for small- to
to subscribe to its Customer Relationship to technology that large companies use. medium-sized labs, which tend to be more
Management (CRM) solutions over the ‘It’s a true revolution for many of these nimble with evolving practices and projects.
internet provided a cheaper and simpler way companies,’ remarks Thomas Rozlucki,
of deploying software than the traditional strategic account manager at Swedish ELN Multi-tenant vs single tenant
means of installing and maintaining often supplier, Contur Software. ‘SaaS makes solutions
expensive software packages in-house. advanced, traditionally expensive software Software as a service in its true form is a
The SaaS model, whereby software more available to the common user.’ multi-tenant solution, in that there is one
applications are licensed to customers as Contur launched its multi-tenant iLabber platform supporting multiple users. This
a service on demand, is beginning to take ELN – the SaaS version of its enterprise is in contrast to a single tenant or hosted
hold in the data management market. product – in 2008. Currently, groups of 15 solution, whereby each user is provided with
Dedicated SaaS-based system vendors are to 20 users are typical, although Rozlucki a separate software instance. US company
springing up, while more established LIMS notes that larger companies have also shown Sciformatix supplies its SciLIMS product as
and ELN providers are starting to offer SaaS interest in the SaaS concept. a multi-tenant LIMS application. Thomas
versions of their enterprise solutions. ERA Biotech, a Spanish biotechnology Kent, president and CEO of Sciformatix,
company developing cell-based points out that growth and scalability of the
Spare a thought for the little guy biomanufacturing technologies, is using LIMS solution depends upon a good SaaS
The major advantage with the SaaS model Contur’s iLabber software in its laboratories. design.
over traditional enterprise deployments Pau Marzábal Luna of ERA Biotech notes A single tenant approach cannot support
of data management solutions, whereby three advantages of the SaaS version of the an ever-growing base of customers, Kent
the software is installed on the client’s ELN. Firstly, Contur deals with the software remarks: ‘As more and more customers are
servers behind its firewall, is one of cost. platform and the problems associated with added, every one of them will be impacted
‘The enterprise model works well and has it, removing the burden from ERA Biotech. by the lack of scalability in the platform,
been successful, but it is a very expensive Secondly, employees who are travelling with a reduction in access to the database
model,’ comments Kim Shah, director of or working from home have access to the and upgrade process.’
marketing and business development – data, as do staff in other facilities. Finally, The design of a multi-tenant SaaS-based
informatics at LIMS provider Thermo Fisher while ERA Biotech generates PDF backups, solution on the other hand, is such that
it doesn’t matter how many subscribers
‘the Major advantaGe of the SaaS
there are, the fundamental infrastructure
remains the same. The only thing that
Model iS one of coSt’
changes is an expansion in the infrastructure
capabilities, i.e. more disk space, larger
Scientific. ‘The software licence, annual all data is fully backed up on the Contur database storage space, higher bandwidth,
maintenance, services for implementation servers. etc. ‘When upgrading to a new version, it’s
and customisation all add up to an Rozlucki also points out how quickly automatically provided to all customers at
investment decision of a few hundred and easily groups can get started with a the same time, as opposed to a hosted model
thousand dollars into the millions of dollars SaaS solution: ‘A customer at one site in which the upgrade is provided to each
range.’ And that’s after the company invests can download the application, send an user individually,’ explains Kent.
in Oracle databases and administrative staff invite to colleagues at different sites all However, many vendors believe the
4
to maintain the servers. over the world, and form a collaborative hosted model is more suitable for an industry
LIG10 pp04-07 Saas.indd 4 18/11/09 17:34:45
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