A major hardware and software vendor is warning of a data centre power disaster sometime in the future. I feel that there is an ulterior motive.

This vendor loses a lot of revenue when SaaS Utilities are created allowing 1000’s of businesses to share infrastructure.

Data centres do go down every now and then, but it is very rare. Usually they are back up quick smart, so this is not a big prediction in my view, just scaremongering.

SaaS utilities know data centres can lose power and they manage for it. One little utility called Google is going as far as starting to fund development of it’s own power generation. Power reliability and reduced power usage are actually two very strong arguments to join the SaaS revolution.

The power burning question is…

Can you run your own self hosted servers at a higher level of power supply related up-time than a SaaS utility can?

SaaS utilities:

• can switch data centres within a Service Level Agreement stated time frame.
• have a uninterrupted power supplies.
• have capacity to send users to alternate nodes in different countries.
• have power surge filtering. That little power-surge protected power pack might not cover you in a direct lightening strike.
• have 24×7 monitoring so that problems begin being addressed immediately.
• consider the energy usage of their servers so as to optimise energy usage and cooling requirements.

Generally speaking hardware and software vendors are likely to suffer a negative revenue impact from businesses migrating to the SaaS world from the Software world. SaaS means thousands of businesses share networks instead of buying their own. It doesn’t take much common sense to realise the impact on software and hardware vendors.

What does the current SaaS revolution mean for these old economy vendors? Less sales, change their business model or fight the trend? We wait patiently to welcome them to the energy eco-friendly world of SaaS.