Software as appliance

Next up on the applications scene - enterprise software that can be bought, deployed and managed as easily as a typical network appliance.

By Joanne Cummings , Network World , 09/26/2005

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In six months, the software has required no maintenance on his part. "It scales and manages its own infrastructure and componentry, its disk space and memory, within the application," he says. "Once it's installed and up and running, it makes the best decisions about how to prioritize, distribute, archive and so on. We don't have to worry about that."

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On average, the application requires about 2K bytes of storage per week. "We'll all be dead before we run out of disk space," Divine says. "We never touch it."

5 questions to ask concerning software appliances

Many vendors say they sell software appliances, but few actually do. Getting the buzz on these questions will help you determine whether your vendor is delivering a true software appliance.

How is it priced? True software appliances are priced flexibly. At the least, they should be offered on a pay-as-you-go leasing basis. At best, they should be offered in both forms, leased and traditional.
How modular is it? True software appliances deliver their features in a modularized, optimized way. They aren’t like monolithic software platforms that are all things to all people. Instead, they allow users to pick and choose the functionality they need.
How standard is it? True software appliances support well-accepted standards, such as the LAMP stack and XML Web services API. This way, they are non-intrusive and easier to deploy. If the software requires a large integration project, it’s not a software appliance.
How easy is it to manage? True software appliances are easily managed, updated and repaired remotely. They also should have some kind of inherent self-management and self-healing tools. If care and feeding from the enterprise staff are required, it isn’t a software appliance.
How secure is it? True software appliances tend to be more secure than their traditional software counterparts because they are built upon a hardened operating system and application stack that supports only the features and functions necessary for the appliance. If it runs on a non-hardened, general-purpose operating system and stack, it’s not a software appliance.

Although Divine says he would have bought the Business Signatures software even if it weren't developed and deployed as a software appliance, he does see key advantages to the form factor. "I like that it's appliance-like, but typical hardware appliances are not very upgradeable. If you want to upgrade them, you usually have to purchase a whole new box. With this, I can use the same box and just deploy the upgrade."

It also makes sense from an efficiency standpoint. "If I decided for some reason, which I doubt I will anytime soon, to part ways with Business Signatures, I could take the hardware that I've dedicated to it and I could re-purpose it somewhere else in my enterprise. That's a significant advantage over a typical hardware appliance."

Mike Riley, vice president of marketing and strategy at Network Engines, which also helps application vendors develop appliances - software- and hardware-based - says both are viable but the key is their self-management. "Many of our customers think that turning an application into an appliance is all about the hardware," he says. "But to us, an appliance is more about the software" because it has to be remotely manageable, maintainable and updateable.