On a specific request from one of our customers, we recently did a detailed analaysis of the various alternatives of building and migrating a SaaS application on .NET, their relative costs and TCO.

The first part of the analysis is to compare the development and deployment costs of a multi tenant application @ Maturity Model 2 and 4. We used the cost of Amazon EC2 instance as a reference.  In a MMM 2 application, a separate instance is required for every new customer / tenant. Whereas in a MMM 4 application, the same instance can be used to support multiple tenants / customers. However the development cost of a MMM 4 application is more than that of a MMM 2 application. So the analysis is to find whether it makes sense to invest in the additional development time to save on the deployment costs. The no. of tenants was assumed to be 50 which is a very conservative number even for a start-up ISV.

The second part of the analysis was a build vs buy comparison for a Multi-tenant SaaS Framework. The in-house framework development and maintenance cost was compared with the licensing costs and AMC costs of a ready to use framework such as celloSaaS.

We then kept the 3 year TCO of a New Multi-tenant (MMM 4) application as the reference cost and calculated the % saving of all the other alternatives.

Migration of an existing .NET application was also considered. Assuming a code re-usability of 50%, we calculated the relative merits of hosting the existing application on Apprenda’s SaaSGrid PaaS viz-a-viz migrating it to a Multi-tenant maturity model 4 at the application level. (with and without celloSaaS)

You can download this excel sheet from our website (Download section), plug and  play with your own nos. and calculate the relative merits of each alternative.

Customizing business rules and workflows for each tenant / user group, is one of the most sought after features in a multi-tenant application. celloSaaS v 3.0 released this month, has a built in business rules engine and workflow engine. It also allows the product developer to expose select variables and actions to the UI layer so that the rules and workflow could be customized by a non-IT person.

For example a HR manager of a tenant would like to customize the business rule regarding benefits administration. Or a purchase manager would like to customize the workflow regarding vendor approval or PO request.

The celloSaaS framework allows each product to define its own domain model and map it to the internal classes and variables used in the BR/WF engine, so that the end user who is doing the customization can deal with “easily understandable” entities and activities. Similarly, the framework also provides complete control to the product developer to decide what aspects of the business rule or workflow should be standard and what aspects should be exposed for customization by end users.

What about Microsoft Workflow Foundation?

There are two types of BR / WF tools. One such as the MWF, is developer friendly but not end user friendly and some other web based ones that are end user friendly, but lack the flexibility and control expected by product developers. Added to this is the lack of Multi-tenancy support. So  after evaluating the options, celloSaaS eventually decided to build its own internal BR / WF engine that gives complete control and flexibility to developers, while allowing tenant level customization by end users.

But nothing prevents developers from using Microsoft Windows Workflow foundation or any such tool to design complex business processes and workflows in their development. The results of these developer level tools can then be used at the input or output of  the celloSaaS BR / WF engine.

This option provides developers the best of both worlds.

Coming Soon

We have a whole batch of features coming soon, that will add enormous value to the celloSaaS framework: Custom Query builder, Custom Report builder, Custom Chart builder and Custom Widget builder. These are tools that a end user at the tenant level could use to customize the product for their organization.

What do you think?

Since celloSaaS license packages come with free upgrades and source code licensing if necessary, building your own Multi-tenant engineering stack does not make sense any more. If you have a point of view, or if you think there is something important that the techcello team should put in its road map, please feel free to write to us.

Techcello’s celloSaaS is focused on ISVs, SIs and Enterprises using .NET / Visual Studio. Applications built using celloSaaS framework can be hosted on Azure with SQL Azure, leveraging all its PaaS functionalities or can be hosted on-premise, in data centres or private clouds with Windows Server and MS SQL.

Opportunity for the Microsoft Partner eco-system

There are 1000s of .Net based products out there, which require to be moved to a multi-tenant model, sooner or later. And many more new applications will be built. When it comes to choosing a platform and while making build vs buy decisions, customers not only look at time and cost, they also look at the technical and strategic freedom, flexibility and control. Techcello satisfies all these criteria.

Out of the 10 million + Visual Studio users and 3 Million MSDN community, even if we assume a mere 500,000 will work on .NET based Multi-tenant SaaS or Multi-tenant Enterprise applications in the next 5 years, the TAM (@US$ 2000 / Developer) could be US$ 1 Billion over the next 5 years.

We invite ISVs, Solution Integrators, Consultants and Resellers of the Microsoft eco system to partner with Techcello in this exciting opportunity.

WPC 2011

The Senior Management of Techcello will be present at the WPC 2011. To set up a meeting, please connect with us through our website http://www.techcello.com/contact-us.html

Techcello’a Multi-tenant SaaS Framework :celloSaaS – fills an important gap between .NET and Cloud (Azure, Amazon, Private).

Unlike alternatives such as SaaSGrid, Force.com and Cordys, celloSaaS does not lock customers in to either a proprietary development platform or in to a non-Microsoft run time container or application server. It retains the .NET environment both during development and during run time, giving them complete technical and strategic control over their entire application stack.

The productized framework approach of Techcello, is very unique. You get the freedom, flexibility and control of custom development without the complexities, risks, cost and time overheads of building and maintaining your own multi-tenant engineering stack. It works with Visual Studio. For a developer familiar with .NET and MVC, there is no learning curve.

ISVs can now leverage their existing .NET resources and products to migrate to a true multi-tenant architecture using the celloSaaS framework, without having to bet the future of their company on emerging non-Microsoft platforms. And they can do so, piece by piece, in phases, without any drastic discontinuity in technology, business models or road maps.

Why Can’t I build this framework myself?

This is obviously the next question. Cellosaas consists of all the multi-tenant engineering components & SaaS operationalization components in a ready to use form, so that the application developer can focus only on building business features rather than engineering / SaaS features.

celloSaaS saves 40-50% on the cost of building a SaaS product or migrating an existing application to a multi-tenant architecture. You can get to the market faster. If you are planning to build or migrate multiple applications to a common foundation framework, the long term savings would be higher. It provides a robust, scalable and strong engineering foundation to your product or application and it is easily extensible. You get a tested and proven stack with maintenance support and free upgrades. The pricing is simple, clear and transparent and source code licensing options are available. http://www.techcello.com/get-started/cellosaas.html

CelloSaaS offers extensive support for tenant level customizability configurability and security. It provides a true multi-tenant architecture at the application level and database level. All features are provided as ready to use APIs and WCF services.

Industry Adoption

Over the last one year, small, medium and large ISVs in Europe, UK, USA, India and Malaysia have chosen the celloSaaS framework either to build new products or migrate their existing / multiple products to a common foundation framework.

Because of its path breaking innovation, compelling value / price proposition and disruptive technology, Gartner featured Techcello as a Cool Vendor in April 2011. Excerpts of the analysis written by Gartner Analyst Eric Knipp can be found in this blog. http://www.techcello.com/wpblog/2011/04/gartner-cool-vendors/

And in June this year, Microsoft chose Techcello as a finalist in the Bizpark Startup Challenge.

Opportunity for Microsoft Partner Community : See next post!

New Features of celloSaaS v2.2

By extending its data providers to support MySQL and SQL Azure (in addition to SQL 2008), Techcello has substantially increased the flexibility and scalability of applications built using celloSaaS. (v 2.2 released in April 2011)

celloSaaS is now Windows Azure compatible, which means, you can leverage the elasticity, distributed caching, service bus, federated access control services and many other advanced features of Microsoft Azure.

On the other hand, if you are comfortable hosting your application on the Amazon Cloud, then the MySQL / Amazon RDS support of celloSaaS could be very useful.

Even if you are not ready to offer your product on a SaaS business model, you can still future proof your product by migrating it to the celloSaaS framework. You can continue to offer the product on-premise (on a Windows Box) or from a data centre / virtual machine till you and your customers are ready to move to the cloud.

Apart from multi-tenancy, celloSaaS brings enormous amount of customizability and configurability to your product using a meta data based approach. This means, even in an on-premise model, you will be able to serve the disparate needs of different customers with a single code base, saving substantial amount of money on implementation, maintenance and support.

Next Release v3.0

ISVs are realizing that taking an existing on-premise product and dropping it in to a container / application server for a monthly fee, may be the fastest way to multi-tenancy and data isolation. But at best this could be a stop gap arrangement and it is definitely not a permanent solution.

One reason of-course is the inherent vendor lock in. And more importantly. there are many other aspects such as customizability and configurability that may or may not have been considered during the earlier thinking and design of the on-premise product.

celloSaaS already provides tenant level customizability for data models, forms, grids, UI themes, security, access control privileges and data scope policies, using a meta data based approach. So you do not have to worry about these aspects. Instead you can focus only on building your business features.

However one of the important needs of any application today is the need to externalize the business rules and workflows out of your code base and make them customizable for each tenant. celloSaaS will support this from the next release scheduled for Q2. If you would like to start your application before that, contact us and we will help you align your development plan with our beta release and final release of v3.0.

Some of the other additions that you can expect in the forthcoming releases are:

** A multi-tenant query builder (with support for data model extensions / custom fields added by tenants and enforcement of data scope policies and access control privileges)

** A multi-tenant custom report tool

Techcello was recently featured by Gartner as one of the Cool Vendors in Web Computing. Excerpts from the analysis written by Eric Knipp.

…majority of SaaS applications use custom multitenancy, forcing developers to incur the overhead associated with the maintenance and enhancement of a multitenancy framework. celloSaaS and celloFrame offer packaged alternatives to custom multitenancy, offering developers the promise of shorter time to market and easier maintenance.

…Organizations can use the techcello framework in any .NET environment, from on-premises Windows boxes to Windows Azure, providing a high degree of portability if an application requires multitenancy but its owner is not yet ready to fully pursue public cloud services. The techcello approach is likely to be ideal for companies — especially independent software vendors — that need to get to market relatively quickly with a multitenant SaaS solution and would like a substantial shortcut while avoiding lock-in to a proprietary application platform as a service (aPaaS).

…Application developers, application architects, application managers, chief technology officers, and any other staff involved in architectural and financial decisions about the design and implementation of new cloud-optimized applications will want to take a look at techcello’s approach, especially if they already use the .NET platform, as this will minimize the learning curve. Many enterprise IT leaders are rightfully concerned about the switching costs attached to higher-order cloud services like aPaaS, and multitenancy frameworks are one way to refocus application development for cloud computing without increasing the risk of platform lock-in.

*For full report please refer ”Cool Vendors in Web Computing 2011″, (C) Gartner Inc. Gartner Report ID Number: G00211327 published on 12th April 2011. All copyrights and trade marks of Gartner Inc and its affiliates are acknowledged.

Techcello recently conducted a survey among ISVs, to understand their thought process and questions about SaaS.

• 20% of the ISVs are still asking : Are we ready for SaaS (O1)?
• 36% of the ISVs are asking questions and evaluating alternatives on :- infrastructure(O2), development platforms(O3,O4), application & data architecture(O5, O6), Technology stacks & Frameworks (O7,O8).
• 3% of the ISVs are already in the market with a multi-tenant SaaS product built on top of a APaaS. (O9)
• 41% of the ISVs are already in the market with a SaaS product built on top of their own home grown stack(O10).

You can see the complete survey format here


Opportunity for using celloSaaS
Home grown application stacks seem to play a dominant role among ISVs who are already in the market, may be because there was no other alternative, when they started. Nevertheless, even now they could migrate their product to the celloSaaS framework, and benefit from all its features, flexibilities and continuous enhancements.

celloSaaS as a competitive advantage
ISVs who are still in the explorative phase, now could use celloSaaS as a source of competitive advantage. They can get a robust and strong engineering foundation for their product, with extensive customizability and configurability – without losing the freedom, flexibility and control associated with custom development. By focusing only on building the business features they can also get to the market faster.

The world is shrinking and the traditional boundaries between Desktop, Client-Server, Web and Cloud technologies are getting blurred. While some of your business applications should be strictly on-premise, some have to move to the private cloud and some more to the public cloud.

The users of today’s applications are spread across product divisions, geographies, business units, upstream vendors, downstream partners and customers. Configurability and customization requirements, security and data-scope policies, data isolation and scalability requirements, administration and reporting needs, all these can be quite diverse. The challenges of architecting and engineering such applications are many.

While SaaS as a business model may not be relevant to an enterprise application, multi-tenant architecture and SaaS like features can substantially reduce the operational and infrastructure costs of an enterprise.

Let us look at some examples that we have recently come across:

One enterprise with a strong franchisee model, is thinking of migrating its application to a multi-tenant architecture. The objective is to bill its franchisees for the usage of IT infrastructure and applications on a monthly variable model, instead of a fixed upfront cost.

A BPO is building a multi-tenant platform to manage its processes, but would be sharing the same application with all its clients.

And there is a large enterprise that is wondering whether it would make economic sense to build a single multi-tenant app. to be used by various SBUs, products, geographical units and subsidaries (each unit to be treated like a tenant).

Why not? Data isolation, data scoping and access control, horizontal scaling, tenant wise customizability and configurability, hosting on a hybrid but elastic infrastructure, single code base, ease of maintenance, reduced opex all these could indeed give this enterprise unparalleled cost savings and benefits.

Vendor management and e-procurement are some other examples where a multi-tenant architecture could be considered.

So thinking about the cloud, is not just about moving or not moving your existing applications and infrastructure to the cloud. It is also about re-thinking your application development framework and how you can leverage the benefits of a Multi-tenant architecture.

So whether you are building a new application or planning to migrate an existing application, you should carefully evaluate the kind of engineering stack that you would like to build (or buy).

Disclosure : Techcello will soon be launching another product called “Cello Frame” : – a Multi-tenant Development Framework for Enterprises.

Client A is a leading ISV with global presence in the Workforce management space. After spending over 3 months with 4 architects, in the process of developing their own SaaS engineering stack and platform, the client came to know of cellosaas. After a rigorous process of evaluation and performance testing, the client decided to shift all their present and future product development to the cellosaas platform. With 30 Developer licenses, this was one of the prestigeous customer win for cellosaas.

Client B is a start-up ISV in the HR space. With a small team of 6 developers whose average experience was less than 3 years, the client wanted to develop a SaaS product and get to the market fast. Leaving the entire engineering and architecture of the product to cellosaas, the client was able to complete their first module and go live on Amazon within 3 months.

Client C is a leading US based ISV in the Benefits Administration space. The client recently entered in to a product development contract for 200 people months with a leading IT Services provider in India. After a joint evaluation process the client and their development partner, decided to build their entire product on top of cellosaas. With 15 developer licenses, this was another validation of the cellosaas value proposition.

Partner A, B and C are leading IT services companies with 1000s of employees each. Two of these partners are focused on product development for ISVs whereas the third is focused on the enterprise space. All these partners, have signed up with Techcello for evaluating cellosaas. Each of these partners have engaged a dedicated team from their SaaS practice to take cellosaas through the evaluation. There are many interesting, deeply technical and architectural questions that are being asked and answered in the process. Techcello will soon be sharing these discussions and insights at its website, for the benefit of every one in the SaaS engineering community.

Techcello recently conducted a survey among ISVs on SaaS : Engineering factors.

Inspite of the faster time to market that is inherent in many proprietary SaaS platforms, an overwhelming no. of ISVs (85%) prefer the flexibility and control offered by industry standard programming models such as .Net and J2EE.  However more than 45% expressed the need for a third alternative that gives them the freedom, flexibility and control of these traditional application platforms, without the complexities, risks, cost and time  overheads of building and maintaining their own SaaS engineering stack.

Another interesting finding is that preference between Microsoft .Net and Open source / Java is almost equally split.

More than 60% ISVs prefer to build or buy a SaaS engineering stack before proceeding with the development of business functions, whereas the remaining 40% would allow the engineering and architecture of the product to evolve parallely, while the business functions are being  built.

When asked about the challenging aspects of building a multi-tenant SaaS product : 65% mentioned ”ability to customize the product for each tenant”. 55% mentioned ”access control privileges and security policies that are unique to each tenant”.

SaaS operationalization aspects such as metering, tenant provisioning and subscription management, were not considered as challenging as customization and security.

Survey Results*

15% would prefer to build their product on PaaS in spite of the platform lock-in and monthly recurring cost

40% would prefer industry standard programming models with complete flexibility and control and would use cloud providers only for hosting and infrastructure scaling.

45% would prefer an option that combines the flexibility and control of option 2 with the speed of option 1.

45% would prefer to use Microsoft .Net technology stack

55% would prefer to use open source / Java technology stack

40% would allow the engineering and architecture of the product to evolve parallely while the business functionalities are being built

60% would first build or buy a SaaS engineering stack / framework before proceeding with the business functions

24% already have built their own in-house SaaS engineering stack / framework

76% would like to evaluate the pros and cons of buying a ready made framework vs. building their own

Challenging aspects of building a Multi-tenant SaaS product

% of ISVs who consider this aspect as challenging

65% : customizing and configuring the product for each tenant (UI, data model extensions, business rules)

56% : security and access control policies that are unique to each tenant (data scoping, field level, page level)

40% : to support database scaling both horizontally and vertically

24% : tenant provisioning, product package and subscription management linked to access controls

11% : metering with links to usage limits and access controls

  9% : Audit trail (tenant wise, user wise)

*Sample size : 55     Aug 2010 : Online Survey among ISVs conducted by techcello using Google Forms