Oct 23
We are proud to announce the launch of community support forum for the users of Emportant – Freedom edition.
We are deeply committed to ensure that Emportant customers irrespective of whether they are on a paid edition or on Freedom edition get quality support. While for paid editions we are able to provide better personalised service thru email, phone and sophisticated ticket mechanism – we had to find a viable and vibrant support platform for Freedom customers as well.
This forum will be actively monitored and manged by our support executives to provide timely support to our valued customers.
This is designed to be a community support forum and hence we expect our experienced customers and partners as wel – to be actively participating in issue resolutions and discussions.
We have also created exclusive board for you to share your ideas and suggestions to keep the community growing. After all Emportant exists because you are important.
Check out – Freedom support forum
Tagged with: emportant • forum • freedom • support
Oct 11
Before we get into the debate – let’s admit – people like us from IT industry love creating new phrases – faster than we develop software. While we can not change that - we are trying to make it easy for you to understand this. For the un-initiated here is a quick description of the two terminologies :
On-premises – This is the way you have bought and used business application/software so far. Buy the license, procure a server, install, test and go-live. On-premise means – software which is installed a hardware box you have procured and possibly runs exclusively for you. Read more on wikipedia
On-demand – This is also known as Software-as-a-Service (SaaS). This is the new way of using the software. You learnt it first when you used web mail – that was the first popular SaaS (though wasn’t called so!). In this case you do not buy the license, nor do you procure the hardware – all you requires is a web browser to use the software. Most of the time – you’d pay for a subscription fee to use the software. Read more on wikipedia
Most often we are asked – how do you choose between the two. Here is a quick comparison between the two:
| Item |
On-premise |
On-demand |
Software
license |
Need
to purchase |
Not
required |
Database
license |
Need
to procure |
Not
required |
| Server |
Need
to procure |
Not
required |
IT
infrastructure management |
Required |
not
required |
Data
backup |
Required |
Not
required |
Control
over IT infrastructure |
Complete |
None |
Integration
with Other systems |
Tight |
Loose
or negligible |
| Customisation |
High
possibility |
Limited
feasibility |
Upfront
investment |
Substantial |
Negligible |
Annual
fee |
Moderate |
Nil |
Monthly
subscription fee |
Nil |
Low |
As you’d notice from the table above – On-demand v/s On-premise debate is not about functionality – but about application management. I have compiled a small list of leading questions which would help answer this question – which is right for me?
- Do you have a IT team to manage your server, database and application infrastructure?
- Do you have the budget to invest in server, database and application software licenses?
- Do you have the need for tight integration ( automated dataflow ) between various applications?
If you have answered Yes to most of the questions above – then you are ready for On-premises software. If you answered No to more than one of these questions – then SaaS is a better choice.
Having said that – being ready for On-premises software does not mean – you should not evaluate on-demand options – it might still present a better value proposition for your organisation.
But this is just the starting point – we’d bring more on this topic in coming days.
Tagged with: on-demand • on-premise • SaaS
