Delivering Business Applications - The uniPaaS Platform Approach
In our previous post we established that too many IT projects are failing. By 'failure' we mean one or more of the following three things:
1. Not completed on-time
2. Not delivered on-budget
3. Doesn't answer the requirement brief
These three factors are particularly sore points today because of the recession. When budgets are tight the benefits of building business applications can be easily outweighed by the costs and effort involved.
That's why many are now opting for Cloud-based solutions that mitigate the risks and costs involved in building and deploying applications in-house.
Well, why not just opt for a SaaS solution like Salesforce.com then? The answer is that while Salesforce.com may be perfect for many enterprises and businesses, it ties you to the Force.com platform.
There is therefore, some insecurity knowing that your mission-critical data is held on another company's servers. There's also a limited scope in how much customization you can demand from your provider. One size generally fits all. And in some instances, this may not be good enough for businesses attempting to differentiate themselves from their competitors in today's tough economic climate.
What's needed then is a platform that can develop powerful, modern applications, such as Rich Internet Applications and SaaS, at low cost, while minimizing the chance of project 'runaways' and which combines the input of both IT specialists and business managers.
Not an easy order to fill.
So, what exactly does uniPaaS offer that's so different?
Well, it can be summarized in 3 short points:
1. uniPaaS is an end-to-end environment for software developers.
2. uniPaaS is based upon a metadata engine.
3. uniPaaS applications can run in multiple deployment modes.
Each of these three points deserves its own entirely dedicated post. So coming up we will deal exclusively with point 1 - uniPaaS' end-to-end environment - and what that means for businesses trying to deliver on-time, on-budget and according to project specs.