If you think building enterprise systems is complex, then building SaaS products can be even more complex, simply because you have to service multiple organizations, each one bringing its own idiosyncratic requirements, and of course, the inevitable Service Level Agreements (SLAs).

Essentially, engineering SaaS products is not all that simple and it typically takes longer to develop an on-demand product.

Hence, one needs to be really sure about the engineering aspects of moving to SaaS before making the transition. Remember, SaaS isn't shrink-wrapped desktop software and it demands a unique architecture to be easily customizable, and extensive user interface design to allow users to successfully adapt to a hosted SaaS application.

Tomcat, MySQL, XML, Struts 2.0, and Java/JSP are all it takes to build a SaaS solution using Java technology. However, several 'fashionable' tools and techniques are touted as the foundation for building SaaS products.
While many of them are indeed valuable companions in the SaaS journey, a provider may fall into the trap of choosing some of these just because they are white-hot buzzwords. Naturally, incorrect architecture/design decisions will lead to short-term crisis or long-term pain or both.

A new whitepaper identifies the fundamental elements that can be used to achieve the goal of right-engineering your SaaS product. It consolidates the technology strategies to build on-demand products and is the result of helping several ISVs transition to an on-demand environment. Of course, these technical guidelines are not specifically developed for SaaS; in fact, some of them have been around for several years and are widely used today to build enterprise products.

The white paper should be able to provide software companies with a good starting point for engineering strategies to achieve SaaS. It includes detailed information on architectural strategies, best practices, databases, virtualization and challenges associated with SaaS products. Click here to download the full white paper, "Right Engineering SaaS: Successfully Deploying Software-as-a-Service Models."

Below, a short excerpt from the whitepaper examines the challenges and pitfalls of SaaS adoption:

• Giant Leaps: An Independent Software Vendor (ISV) should not adopt a big bang approach in rolling out the SaaS version. If you are a client-server product vendor, you should first think about web enablement and then move to SaaS. Another big bang approach to be avoided is the multi-year waterfall model for software development. Iterative and agile methodologies are naturally highly recommended.
• Customization cliff: Building highly customizable products is a complex activity. Even though 'Customization through Configuration' is identified as a best practice, it remains a Holy Grail for the technical teams. It is equally difficult to maintain multiple versions of your software that are highly customized for each tenant. There is no magic wand available and hence you should bite only what you can chew.
• Designing with buzzwords: SaaS is not 'SOA, AJAX As a Service'. In fact, we have helped ISVs build database-driven multi-tenant systems without using SOA or middleware products. So, it is important to consider SaaS to be 'Service as a Software' and make the appropriate choice of architecture, technology platform and toolkits.
• Anti-Patterns: Building on-demand products just like traditional on-premise systems; not starting with xml/metadata as a key foundation; or, overdoing the usage of metadata thus increasing the application complexity; lack of clear understanding of the performance costs associated with loose coupling are some of the common anti-patterns of building applications in the cloud.
• Buying SaaS: SaaS is not a product that you can buy; rather an ISV should transition to the SaaS model with support from the business team, technology partners and hosting providers. Unfortunately, SaaS is a journey that has few shortcuts and it is important to be wary of quick fixes and short enablement programs. Instead, right-engineering your product can go a long way towards making your Software-as-a-Service truly successful.

Karthik Viswanathan heads the marketing team at Aspire Systems. He can be reached at karthik.viswanathan@aspiresys.com.