Cloud Computing - Benefits and Pitfalls of Upgrades

At the Business Cloud Summit 2010 last week, one of the panellists said “upgrades are a two-edged sword” with the cloud app he was using. Unfortunately he didn’t tell us what he meant, but I can hazard a few guesses.

One edge of the sword is the four key benefits of an upgrade of a SaaS app, compared to an on-premise app:

• The technical process happens without you having to lift a finger (unless integration needs to be updated)
• The process is typically free of charge within the standard service fees
• Incremental improvements can be made more regularly, if required
• In part these can be due to the fact that the software author can monitor use of the app, and respond to any obvious problems that wouldn’t typically be apparent with an on-premise app

An Upgrade Example

So let’s take a very simple cloud-based app. You may use bit.ly to create shortened URLs (web page addresses) for use in tweets, and/or for monitoring click-throughs.

The process of creating a shortened URL couldn’t be much simpler – put in a long URL and a new short URL is displayed. A few months ago a new version appeared. This worked in a particular way, providing an easy “copy” button to move the URL to where you needed it. It also allowed the randomly-generated URL to be replaced with a customised URL, if you could invent one that hadn’t already been used. Great. A simple procedure was drawn up, which could be used by anyone in the business, and it worked brilliantly for some time.

Then on Tuesday 16th November it wasn’t there. In its place was a new facility with no copy button and no customisation feature. Had there been any warning? No. Did our little procedure now work? No.

The Other Edge of The Sword

So we were using a free version of the app, and surely that sort of thing wouldn’t happen with a proper fee-based SaaS service? Sadly nothing can be taken for granted when considering a SaaS offering and provider. So when considering using one it’s worth asking:

• What notice do you get of functional changes (upgrades)? What detail do you get of changes (release notes)?
• Do you have chance to review the new version before release so any procedures can be updated and any retraining take place? Or do you have to be in place on upgrade day, and frantically do the updates/training on the fly?
• Do you have a test system alongside your own live system, to do the checks and training?
• Do you get chance to take part in pre-release “beta testing”, so you can report back any significant issue in time to be fixed before the upgrade?
• Or do you have to prohibit access to the live system, by staff and/or customers, whilst these checks all take place after an upgrade?
• Do you get any choice in when the upgrade takes place?

It is traditional with on-premise software to wait until others have upgraded before doing so yourself, and/or thoroughly test a new version of software before making it live. That is not necessarily available with a public multi-tenanted SaaS cloud service.

It clearly isn’t in the provider’s interests to screw up their entire customer base in one hit, and they will be very careful with an upgrade. However it doesn’t mean to say that clangers don’t slip through. I’ve seen it happen with a prize-winning cloud service.

So it’s worth understanding exactly how a SaaS cloud app will be upgraded, and make it a key aspect of your decision whether to use that particular offering.

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