Life in the cloud O
In the first of two articles about informatics software as a
service, Sophia Ktori looks at the motivations for transferring to the cloud
ne of the topical issues in 2015 has been the benefits to R&D-centered industries of transferring their informatics platforms into the cloud
and adopting soſtware as a service (SaaS). One of the claimed benefits is the ability to offload to the vendors a proportion of the financial and technical burden of establishing complex and sophisticated soſtware. Talk to the soſtware vendors themselves, however, and there is discussion, if not dispute, and a variety of opinion. According to some, the benefit is purely the financial aspect of not making a large capital outlay to buy an in- house informatics system; others will argue that there are technical benefits in simplifying installation and customisation. A third claim is that the cloud fosters cooperative working, across laboratories and time zones. One thing
8 SCIENTIFIC COMPUTING WORLD
is certain: the cloud is not one-size-fits-all. If you look at ‘the cloud’ as a platform
for hosting informatics and data, then what you are effectively referring to is the (off-site) location, and possibly size, of the servers on which your database sits and your application is run, points out John Boother, managing director at UK-based Autoscribe Informatics. ‘Tere is no massive technological leap. Moving into the cloud is, in effect, a commercial, rather than a technical decision.’ Te SaaS license model does provide a way
of spreading the cost of an informatics system purchase – rather than requiring up front capital expenditure for a perpetual license – he admited. ‘However, over a number of years, those quarterly, six monthly, or yearly SaaS fees may well add up to the same as the cost of a perpetual licence. What SaaS in the cloud does
give you is the potential to reduce the upfront expense associated with onsite IT support, back up, and in-house, or privately rented, server costs.’
Prohibitive capital expenditure So yes, one of the major advantages of switching over to SaaS in the cloud is financial, agreed J JMedina, senior director of product strategy at GoInformatics. ‘It is increasingly tough for companies to absorb the huge capital expenditure that is inevitably associated with purchasing an on-premises laboratory information management system (LIMS). For a large enterprise, the acquisition of dedicated servers, significant upfront licensing costs, customisation packages, and committing to ongoing maintenance, can amount to a couple of million dollars. Tis may also involve committing to substantial implementation costs, with a lengthy deployment over multiple years. You end up with standing armies of people on both sides – vendor and client – which will require additional investment from the client to hire and train IT personnel. For
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