Framework for SaaS management platform

Abstract

Software-as-a-service (SaaS) is becoming a popular software delivery model. Especially for enterprise software, the shift to SaaS model is happening rapidly because of cloud technologies becoming mature. This triggers more complex SaaS ecosystems come into being, and demands more supporting and enabling functions accordingly, including service lifecycle management, business relationship and process management, charging and billing for all the roles in ecosystem and so on. This paper describes our research on SaaS management platform, and proposes a framework to support different business models as well as multiple application architectures. The framework covers both technical and business requirements in a separate while interconnected way, and takes non-functional considerations into account, such as availability, security, scalability and performance. As a validation of our framework, a case study is presented which addresses a couple of typical SaaS management scenarios. © 2010 IEEE.