Connection Between TCA and SaaS

TCA, or Transaction Cost Analysis, is a tool that has demonstrated its value when it comes to planning for capacity and the bottlenecks for systems. This is particularly true for websites which offer standard business to consumer events.

The big question that many developers have asked themselves is whether or not its possible to use TCA in conjunction with software as a service capacity planning. There are many architectural issues which must be considered with such a collaboration, and for the most part, this subject is somewhat theoretical. There are a number of limitations that TCA has that would make it challenging to successfully use in conjunction with SaaS.

These architectural issues must be carefully considered by any company or entity that is thinking of using both TCA and SaaS together. By understanding the limitations of TCA, it is possible in theory to use both of these tools seamlessly together. Transaction cost analysis is a method of capacity planning which has been designed for business websites.

TCA is much more advanced than traditional stress test techniques, and the reason for this is simply because it offers a model which is predictive when it comes to the issue of capacity; it is capable of handling growth which has not been anticipated, either for change or the pattern of usage. In these situations, it is not very feasible for testing to be used to figure out the ways in which every tenant will effect capacity.

The TCA methodology was established in 1999 by Microsoft. This methodology was created so that it could be used for the planning of Microsoft tools, particularly servers. Over the last decade, these tools have been adopted by other companies who are interested in learning more about how capacity could be predicted, as well as how to locate bottlenecks to create hardware requirements that are highly accurate.

While it is true that some people have been critical of TCA, a lot of this criticism is based on misconceptions which are made in regards to TCA. When TCA is properly utilized, it can be very valuable for capacity planning for the systems which are SaaS based.

TCA and SaaS will only work together if TCA is used in the way it was originally designed. The concept of SaaS is extremely attractive. In many ways, SaaS is essentially a logical extension of SOA. The goal of the service is to make sure they are based on a contract, and it is also important for them to be autonomous.

It is also critical that the end-users are able to access them via HTTP. Under no circumstances should there be any barrier to hosting these tools over the Internet.  SaaS is often seen as being the "service which is in the cloud," and the reason for this is because the software is provided to the end user in the way of a service. SaaS must be seen as being a service oriented part of the Microsoft Software approach. The SaaS component will provide the largest barrier to properly integrated SaaS and TCA.

There are a number of reasons why companies want to use TCA in conjunction with SaaS. One of the most important reasons is the fact that the cost of production comes down substantially. A company which is able to "provide its services from the clouds" will be able to greatly lower the costs which are connected to hosting them inside a data center they control.

Not only can SaaS lower costs, but it can also make the costs a lot more predictable. Instead of the customer being responsible for the implementation of patches and upgrades, the software provider will need to do these things themselves. The business managers are able to put their focus on the core business.

SaaS for Service Providers

Being able to successfully use SaaS in conjunction with TCA will bring a number of powerful advantages to those who provide software services. Despite the fact that distributed computing has allowed a great deal of accessibility when it comes to network, it has often lead to a great increase in the complexity of systems.

It has been shown historically that complexity leads to specialization, and this is just as true for IT as it is for everything. However, the thing which makes SaaS attractive is that it makes this process very cost effective.