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FrontRange Solutions' New Saas IT Line Does Hosting Right

By Brendan B. Read
Senior Contributing Editor

The software-as-a-service (SaaS (News - Alert)) aka hosting delivery model is gaining clientele as it promises low or no capital costs, reduced support expenses and greater flexibility. Yet successfully hosting especially complex applications such as IT support tools is much more than installing software onto a server and connecting it to a network that is linked to clients and their users. It requires carefully architecting the solutions for the hosted environment.

That’s what FrontRange Solutions, which provides IT service management (ITSM), IT asset management and customer service management solutions, has done with its new SaaS-configured ITSM premise-licensed product, whose first wave was announced Jan.18. Introduced by the firm under its new SaaSIT brand, succeeding waves of new functionalities will come ashore out over the next six to nine months.

The new FrontRange solution includes ITSM, service catalog and advanced change, asset and inventory, configuration, knowledge and service level management. It incorporates comprehensive IT best practices and an ITIL framework; it supports ITIL version 2, which is now being phased out as well as the now-standard ITIL v3. There is a business workflow designer and engine, an internal and external customer self-service portal, extensive reports and analytics and customer survey capabilities.

The SaaSIT line can also be run on internal clouds, which the firm says some of its customers/clients such as government agencies handling sensitive data may wish to have.

Upcoming releases will include advanced license, IT asset and patch management, software distribution and operating system deployment functionalities. They will be integrated with VoIP-based IVR and live agent/support rep voice and customer service both fully hosted or through client media servers that are controlled through the cloud.

All current and future SaaSIT applications are presently available on FrontRange’s premise-installed ITSM Enterprise Solution, unveiled in October 2010. FrontRange drew from 20 years’ experience delivering service management and asset management solutions to more than 13,000 companies worldwide in creating both products.

The SaaSIT line’s features have and are being built on the new FrontRange Multi-Tenant SaaS Platform. CEO Michael McCloskey reports that his firm spent two years re-architecting from scratch a new platform for the SaaS environment. In contrast, many premise-license applications are not written for the Internet, he points out. A fair amount of their logic resides on the client side that that then requires frequent bandwidth-consuming traffic between the hosted server and the client (and clients’) software.

“When your computer application sits inside four walls you can readily take many trips from the client-side to the server-side as everything is local,” explains McCloskey. “But when the servers sit beyond the four walls, such as for remote offices, performance of traditional premise-based systems can suffer.”

There are other advantages. “When there are upgrades, which are usually three to four times a year, our clients can select the ones they wish via user administration, which you typically can’t do with typical premise offerings or many other hosted solutions; you have to take them all,” says McCloskey.

Security not an issue; it is usually superior in a SaaS environment compared with premises, the FrontRange CEO points out.

“We spent a lot of money building security into the infrastructure whose costs we then spread out to our clients whereas many companies just don’t have or can afford that same level of security internally,” says McCloskey.

The SaaSIT arrival is serendipitous. Many competing premise-based ITSM applications such as HP’s Service Desk are nearing the end of their lifecycles or are difficult to upgrade, such as BMC’s Remedy software, reports the FrontRange executive. Many traditional providers do not have true SaaS offerings he points out but instead will host their products: with the heavy client-side applications.

As FrontRange’s SaaSIT line is browser-based, customer clients can easily transition from their older solutions to it without a costly and cumbersome “rip-and-replace” process.

FrontRange relies on winning clients from other solutions providers as “there is very little greenfield in our business,” explains McCloskey.

So are there any compelling reasons to stay with premise-licensed as opposed to SaaS? In FrontRange’s case customers can buy all the features of its ITSM product now with premises licenses rather than waiting for full roll out in SaaS. Yet that benefit is diminished as few of its clients actually purchase all of the available suites at the same time.

Although early, FrontRange is gaining strong interest and an increase in its pipeline of deals for both its ITSM Enterprise Solution as well as SaaS offering. Some customers are telling the firm that are not sure about the SaaS model and that they need to have their data on premises; those in the healthcare field, for instance are sometimes concerned about complying with HIPAA regulations.

“Each customer must make their own assessment whether to go a SaaS model,” advises McCloskey. “This includes an analysis of total cost of ownership, security, IT staffing availability and capability.”