"Developing" Nations Have An Opportunity To Jump Ahead Of The Rest Using SaaS

An advantage of not always being the first to do things is the learning opportunity afforded by watching how other people's decisions and investments work out. Recent examples include the trend for biofuels which has sent food prices soaring and has caused forests to be cleared to make space to grow biofuel crops. However, it appears that processing these crops into biofuels may generate more carbon dioxide than burning fossil fuels would have done anyway. Even “green” hybrid vehicles are being questioned because of the size of the carbon footprint associated with the production and transportation of the nickel metal hydride and lithium-ion batteries they use.

So it has been for Information Technology. Many corporations and governments have historically invested in heavyweight IT infrastructure with its associated hunger for capital expenditure combined with on-going escalating operating expense and the unquenchable thirst for electricity and datacenter space that goes along with such decisions.

It’s this lesson that corporations and governments in many so-called “developing” nations have observed with interest as they look to compete even more effectively on the global stage.

For example corporations and governments in these countries are proactively seeking solutions to better manage and share information with wider audiences for commercial, compliance, regulatory, anti-fraud and anti-corruption purposes as they work to achieve new and higher standards in these areas.

To increase competitiveness and provide access to new markets, they are looking for viable solutions that allow virtual teams to share information and collaborate on a national, continental and global scale. Whether it be in the financial, legal, telco & media, life sciences, manufacturing, real estate, construction, or government sectors — making the talent pool that’s already available in these developing nations more available to the rest of the world competitively, rapidly, safely, securely, and in an auditable environment, represents a significant opportunity for economic growth.

The opportunity is to learn the lessons of the past and leapfrog a whole generation of traditional information technology decisions in the process. For example, solutions for information sharing and collaboration wrapped in a highly secure Software as a Service (SaaS) model can reap almost instant rewards. Not only can the application simply be switched on at any time and at any scale, if done correctly, it also gives securely controlled access to a national or international team without any infrastructure commitment — that means solving problems without burning capex. That also means, no datacenter space is needed and there are no power tariff or loadshedding considerations.

A SaaS strategy can also enable corporations with geographically dispersed operations the opportunity to integrate their existing information silos simply and easily without a major IT integration investment.

When application acceleration technologies like Akamai are incorporated in the SaaS offering, and when used in combination with the significant network investments being made by the carriers themselves — e.g. in the African continent in preparation for the 2010 FIFA World Cup in South Africa — SaaS solutions are now more viable than ever before for corporations and governments in these nations.

And to go back to the beginning, SaaS solutions are environmentally friendly. Apart from having — at worst — zero impact on the corporate datacenter’s air conditioning or server electricity bill, SaaS solutions enable working in virtually real time, with information online which cuts down on paper and keeps packets/parcels of paper and documents from being shipped round the world at significant cost by planes, trains and automobiles (even hybrid ones).