Science as a service

What happens when you apply software-as-a-service principles to science?

Software as a service (SaaS) is one of the great innovations of Web 2.0. SaaS enables flexibility and customized solutions. It reduces costs — the cost of entry, the cost of overhead, and as a result, the cost of experimentation. In doing so, it’s been instrumental in spurring innovation.

So, what if you were to apply the principles of SaaS to science? Perhaps we can facilitate scientific progress by streamlining the process. Science as a service (SciAAS?) will enable researchers to save time and money without compromising quality. Making specialized resources and institutional expertise available for hire gives researchers more flexibility. Core facilities that own equipment can rent it out during down time, helping to reduce their own costs. The promise of science as a service is a future in which research is more efficient, creative, and collaborative.

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7 Companies That Used IT to Cut Costs and Help Business Profit

Cutting costs is becoming increasingly difficult in today's oppressive economic climate. To give you some inspiration, we bring to you a set of case studies on CIOs who braved the economy and introduced thrifty solutions for their respective businesses.

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Five things you can do to avoid paying too much for cloud services

While cloud computing has many benefits for businesses - such as increased flexibility - the biggest reason companies are moving to the Cloud is to help lower IT costs.

In a survey conducted by IDG Enterprise earlier this year, 71% of organizations said they planned to increase their spending on cloud services in 2012. The biggest motivator: cost savings.

But that doesn’t mean moving applications to the cloud will automatically cut costs for the company. If the proper steps aren’t taken, organizations can find that they’re spending way more on cloud services than they originally planned.

Here are five things businesses must keep in mind to avoid paying too much for cloud computing services:

1. Negotiate a better contract
2. Centrally manage cloud provisioning
3. Right-size your cloud services
4. Watch out for hidden costs
5. Minimize - and plan for - outages

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Business case for automating open source code management

It typically costs $13-$19 to develop a single line of debugged, documented and maintained software source code. Development organizations are increasingly turning to open source software which offers hundreds of thousands of freely downloadable software components which can be leveraged to slash development budgets by thousands or even millions of dollars. However, management, security and compliance issues related to open source software can introduce business risks that must be addressed. Manual processes for managing these risks incur significant costs - about $7800 annually per software component. These costs can negate the benefit of leveraging open source code.

This paper reviews the business case for automating the management of open source and provides recommendations for how to make open source an integral part of your software development operation while addressing business risks and compliance issues.