The world of software looks set to be turned on its head by the Internet in the coming few years as applications are increasingly delivered as a service over the Web rather than pre-installed on companies' servers and end-users' computers.
It's a trend that Dimension Data division Internet Solutions (IS) hopes to capitalise on. IS application solutions manager Hayden Lamberti says the software-as-a-service (Saas) model, also sometimes referred to as "cloud computing" - where the Internet is the cloud from which applications are served - offers opportunities for IS in two areas.
IS has developed a range of generic hosted applications, including cloud-based Microsoft Exchange e-mail products. It offers these at low cost - profiting once it has achieved sufficient scale. The second area where it is focusing is in hosting and supporting the development of Web-based applications for independent software vendors (ISVs). It is developing a cloud-based delivery mechanism for these applications.
WHAT IT MEANS
 Has a range of generic hosted applications
Starting to offer support to vendors
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"We are definitely seeing a big pick up of Saas," Lamberti says. "Small, medium and large corporations are all looking at the Saas model for a variety of reasons. Chief among them is that companies are increasingly mobile and have distributed workforces."
Firstly, IS is providing core infrastructure application services, the sort of generic applications that are common to most businesses, like e-mail, archiving, content management and customer relationship management. It's a volume game, so the more companies and users on the service, the more cost effective it becomes for IS clients.
These services could put IS into competition with Google, whose Google Apps product provides similar services. But Lamberti thinks IS offers local value such as bandwidth and the fact that data is stored locally, and not on international servers, possibly avoiding regulatory implications.
The second area of focus is in building an environment in which ISVs can deploy cloud-based applications. IS, Lamberti says, is not a specialist software development house building specific software solutions, such as accounting tools or supply chain management software, for clients. But it will work with third-party software vendors to build and host these applications in its data centres.
"We provide the virtual environment, the delivery mechanism, single sign-on authentication mechanisms, and so on," Hayden says.
"What we are creating is an environment where people can bring their software, put it into this environment, allowing them to deliver their applications centrally over the Web easily."
He says IS can offer ISVs "small segments" of IS's "virtualised" server environment, thereby reducing their need for high capital expenditure. There are also no hosting costs as IS charges them on a per-user basis. "This offers a low-cost route into the Saas model."
It's only when the cloud-based applications that IS is hosting for ISVs begin to take off that it will begin to profit. "I envisage building a community of Saas providers in the cloud - if we can get that right we will start to see guys stitching their applications together. Certain modules of one application, for example, could be delivered into the software of another application in the cloud."
