Guide to SaaS implementation with Azure
The businesses running on-premise IT Infrastructure need to take responsibility for almost everything. From sourcing to purchasing, managing, and maintaining the infrastructure they need to handle it all. And the entire process is time consuming. Plus, it requires money and necessary expertise. Besides, the business is also responsible for paying for infrastructure’s energy costs, fixing the failing server, and maintaining backups. It is where SaaS comes into play.
Software as a service or Saas is an ideal solution where users get connected to cloud-based applications using the Internet. The major examples include — calendaring, office tools like Microsoft Office 365, and email.
Watch webinar: Saas Overview Towards Effective and Intelligent Multi Tenancy With Ms Azure
Moreover, it also facilitates users with a complete software solution that allows them to “pay-as-you-go basis” for using the cloud services. Plus, it also facilitates them with renting an application for their organization. Users can easily connect to the app with the Internet.
The data center of the service provider includes all the app data, infrastructure, app software, and middleware. Plus, the service provider also manages the software and hardware as per the service agreement. The expert also ensures the security and availability of the user’s data and app. With SaaS the organization can function more efficiently at lowest possible upfront cost.
Advantages of SaaS implementation with Azure
Availability and Scalability
The solution is created to facilitate the tenants with the advance features of SaaS. It requires a number of scalable services and components for growth based on the organization’s load. The architecture can easily handle huge load of data and requests. Moreover, it’s a budgeted solution which enables both small and big organizations to take its advantage. The solution also eliminates the need for multiregion overhead which increases the cost and complexities unnecessarily.
Also Read: How to Accelerate Time to Value for your Hybrid IT Strategy with Microsoft Azure?
Multitenancy solution
SaaS is a multitenant solution for handling a number of clients in a go. The solutions also helps in allocating adequate amount of resources required of processing the client requests much more efficiently. When the requests are being processed the traffic from multiple endpoints are secured by this solution. It isolates customer data for preventing cross-contamination and breaches.
Using this solution user can easily deploy clients to a compute group. The requests are isolated by the system on the basis of client keys and authentication and differentiated according to the unique identifiers. Client requests are encrypted by the system can separately using the keys. It eliminates the possibilities of data decryption of a client by another client. It gives users the ability of optimizing resource allocation for providing clients with the required responsiveness.
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Advance security system
The solution addresses end-to-end security from various application levels such as the ones listed below -
Azure Front Door facilitates users with in-built HTTPS support for multiple domains. Resultantly, the system can easily encrypt the entire traffic of the domains to SaaS app. Plus, the solution also helps in implementing Azure Web Application Firewall to protect the SaaS stack from various attacks.
Every application stack in different regions is features in an Azure Virtual Network. The traffic is restricted by the system into the network that accepts requests through the Azure Front Door. It provides protection from external traffic to various application services. Application Gateway is also ideal for terminating SSL and providing performance routing and load balancing within the app.
All connection strings, credentials, and secrets can be easily managed in a secure manner by Azure Key Vault. To manage this sensitive data much more efficiently developers may add credentials into the app during deployment. It is to ensure complete security of the code and sensitive info. It also helps in protecting client data and preventing the possibilities of breach preventing a third party to access the databases.
In such scenarios, the tenants’ data exist alongside the database server or the same database. JIT and TDE decryption keeps the data completely secure on the database. And the entire data is encrypted by the system. Data decryption takes place only when tenant’s places the request.
The keys can be provided by the clients and can be stored in Azure Key Vault for managing encryption for several tenants simultaneously. It helps in protecting client data while preventing the developers from accessing the confidential data.
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Easy app data access
Cloud storage allows the users to access all the info using Internet-connected mobile device or computer. Storing app data in the cloud eliminates the possibilities of data loss even if the device or computer of the user fails.
Steps to implementing SaaS model with Azure
You can make your business successful by following the steps listed below for SaaS model implementation.
· Develop strategies
Building the right strategy is crucial for ensuring the company’s success. Define the unique values that help you in helping your customers with their particular needs and how your company is different from your competitors. Also, decide the pricing options that will best suit your customers and at the same time bring you huge revenues.
Also Read: Azure Migration Strategy
You should build strategies for post and pre-sales engagement and the ways of compensating sales executives. Create a business plan for providing customers the best offers that will not only benefit them but also contribute in growth of your business. Look for the best support options so that your customers can be at benefit. Look for the support offerings that come with Microsoft’s Azure solutions.
· Training and hiring employees
The employees you hire form the most important asset of the company. Their contribution plays a crucial role in the success of an organization. Start with evaluating the existing team members. It will not only give you a better idea of their expertise level but also help in deciding whether your organization needs more experts or training of the current team is sufficient for meeting the market requirements. The individuals should have good experience of advance cloud practices.
· Choosing the right process for implementation
Right implementation of a solution is as important as using the right technology for implementing the strategies. Users can easily create solutions for their SaaS practice by choosing a process that fits their requirements best. It’s best to develop a repeatable process for building a profitable practice.
Also Read: Ms Azure Cloud Automation — Things to consider and best practices.
· Closing the deals
SaaS has transformed the way customers used to purchase the software. Free preview and trials allow them to build interaction with the service providers before making the sales. It is to be noted that marketing and sales are a team effort and both go hand in hand. One of the best ways of closing a sale is writing a compelling proposal. SaaS implementation with Azure allows businesses to grow while providing both co-marketing and co-selling benefits.
· Optimization and growth
Practicing and implementing Saas doesn’t necessarily means your business will succeed. To ensure best in the class results you need to work on optimizing your practice. One of the best ways to optimize and grow is by learning more about your customers. It will also help you in expanding to new markets while leveraging strategic partnerships. Also, if you develop customer personas it will enhance your overall expertise while helping you to enhance your efforts with a more comprehensive service. For proper SaaS implementation you may take help of an expert as well.
Adoption of a SaaS model with Azure opens a number of opportunities and growth prospects for the business as it runs on the cloud system. Plus, it also eliminates geographic by supporting local compliance, data residency, and sovereignty requirements.
Also Read: Azure SignalR Service for ASP.NET — All you need to know.
Another major benefit of SaaS implementation is freeing the existing clients from bearing any additional cost. Additionally, you’ll be able to improve the service offerings while facilitating customers with independent cost and time and extensive capabilities.
Conclusion and Takeaways
Creating a new application is an extensive task and SaaS expands the decisions making set for the users which make the process a lot more exhaustive for the individuals. There are a number of factors to be considered to ensure effective implementation. The process can become much easier if you’ll have an idea about what goes into making SaaS implementation.
Determine whether the application needs to be multi-tenant or single-tenant. The best ways of achieving scalability and reliability across single as well as multiple datacenters. Look for the best ways of handling security, access control, and identity. Find out about the metrics that the application is required to track and what are the potential ways of storing and processing the information.
Besides, learn about the operations designs needed for the application. Get details about the application’s portability and how it would affect your design choices. Also, know about the functions that the application needs to expose using APIs.
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Look for application customization that will fit your requirements and what solutions will provide better customization options for supporting your application.
It isn’t an exhaustive list of considerations but there are a number of other factors too that need to be considered when implementing SaaS. When creating SaaS application it is important to determine all possible issues that could come up during the process.
In a nutshell, the SaaS model is a perfect option to accelerate the sales and offers a seamless experience to the customers.
For Microsoft Azure deployment for your business that requires SaaS development or implementation, contact consultants at Stridely. After the discuss and planning, let us fulfill your SaaS needs the way you want.
