SaaS vs. on-premise: achieving a healthy balance

IT managers face tough decisions every day. Cloud computing, rather than providing all the answers, throws up even more questions to grapple with. Security as a Service (SaaS), the term given to hosting traditional security solutions by a third party, is potentially one of the most business critical options for the cloud, and one which resellers play a vital part in the decision-making process.
The good news is that IT Security doesn’t have to be an all or nothing approach. Just like our decision between the chocolate bar and the piece of fruit – all that is required is a healthy balance – a blend of both cloud and on-premise solutions. The difficult part is understanding what is the right mix for your particular organisation.
Hosted
The lure of convenience that an on-demand security environment brings is strong. In the current economic climate hosted solutions are increasingly popular as they offer an operational expenditure model as opposed to a capital one. This not only resonates with the end customers but also the service provider/reseller. The model allows greater flexibility by offering pay-as-you-grow architecture as well as a recurring revenue stream. It also mitigates a certain amount of risk from the channel as the contract and service level is held with the vendor.
As the model grows, new services can be developed to offer things such as managed end point security or managed firewalls, both of which are in their infancy and require a more hands on approach from the channel partner but retain the fundamentals of SaaS.
Despite its attraction, concerns over potential lack of control or worse still, redundancy, can weigh heavy on the minds of end-users and IT managers.
Potential
What is clear, however, is that SaaS has the potential to provide a strong source of revenue for traditional security resellers. To take a slice of the pie, it is vital that the channel is able to educate and advise end users of the benefits they can gain from moving their security into cloud and which aspects of security are most suited to be delivered as a service at any given time. The aim should be to guide end user organisations to find a healthy balance of on and off-premise solutions.
 
Content security – securing emails, web browsing and data sharing – is an ideal candidate for SaaS. As scanning takes place while the payload is in transit threats are picked up before they can even enter an organisation’s network. If an on-premise solution were being used, it would only detect the threat once it had entered the network, which could already be too late.
Balance
That said, on-premise solutions can often deliver a far more granular approach. Setting policies such as creating a rule to route emails of a certain size to a specific location for checking is often easier on-premise than in the cloud. For this reason, it would be logical to keep some of a company’s security applications in their traditional environment.
 
If resellers work closely with their customers to analyse and assess their needs rather than just recommending SaaS as the latest technology trend the best of both worlds can be enjoyed. Security resellers should be able to take advantage of this exciting time in the market and should look to their channel partners if they don’t have all the skills or tools they need. SaaS is a young and exciting market. By embracing the ‘healthy balance’ approach, neither resellers nor their customers need be left behind.