Category: SaaS

What does it take to build and run a successful SaaS business on AWS? This is a question the AWS SaaS Factory team gets often during our conversations with AWS Partners and customers who are moving to SaaS. While there is no single formula, we have been observing some common patterns and strategies that help organizations maximize SaaS success. In a recent webinar series, AWS SaaS Factory demystified some of the common patterns and strategies with AWS Partners Druva, NetWise, Stripe, Crowdstike, and Snowflake.

A key challenge SaaS providers face is understanding the cost profile of their environment and the customers within it. Measuring the cost of each tenant in the system, understanding cost-effectiveness of product features, and accurately metering the margin in a SaaS solution are examples of abilities that are critical for SaaS success. Learn why breaking down the cost to different unit metrics, customers, features, segments, and business units is a requirement for any modern SaaS business.

MariaDB offers a single unified analytical and transactional cloud database that can auto scale without the costly tradeoffs. SkySQL is a database as a service (DBaaS) solution on AWS that makes it easy for customers to start using MariaDB Enterprise in the cloud. It eliminates the need to pre-provision expensive hardware for testing, which often sits idle. In this post, the AWS SaaS Factory team speaks with Alexey Vorovich, VP of Engineering for SkySQL at MariaDB, about the recent SkySQL launch.

Maximizing performance is a key area of focus for all architects. Achieving optimal performance, however, can be challenging in SaaS environments where multi-tenant workloads can make it difficult to efficiently profile and scale your environment. This post dives deep into the challenges, opportunities, and best practices of efficiently managing performance in multi-tenant SaaS environments on AWS. We’ll review these topics through the lens of an example multi-tenant search application.

Operational excellence is a key challenge for SaaS providers as it deals with the ability to run and monitor workloads effectively and to continuously improve supporting processes and procedures to deliver business value. Implementing AWS best practices will enable you to handle and respond to continually shifting tenant workloads and usage patterns, and use data-driven insights to achieve desired business and technical outcomes.

Global leader in identity security CyberArk’s Identity Security Platform will be a native SaaS solution built on AWS that provides customers with a comprehensive set of capabilities to help secure all identities from one centralized location. Working closely with the AWS SaaS Factory team, CyberArk navigated technical and business decisions to build and launch the offering. We recently spoke with Assaf Miron, Sr. Product Manager at CyberArk, to learn more about the platform.

A new independent Forrester Total Economic Impact (TEI) study shows how SaaS companies have realized a 70% ROI within 18 months, while allowing their teams to focus on customer experience and how to differentiate their offerings. Forrester also found that SaaS providers reduce the risk of failed launches and time to launch by 69-77%. AWS invests in partner success for both business and technical transformation through programs like AWS SaaS Factory, AWS Marketplace, AWS ISV Accelerate, among others.

SaaS transformations are full of unknowns for those who navigate these issues for the first time. The AWS SaaS Factory team has observed many organizations transforming to a SaaS delivery model, and we have witnessed many that succeeded and some who haven’t. Explore five common challenges faced in the Business Planning phase of the SaaS Journey Framework, and dive deep on SaaS transformation pitfalls that are hindering companies’ success.

Capturing, managing, and analyzing costs is an essential part of any SaaS business. Without a firm grasp on the cost profile of your SaaS environment, it will be difficult to assess the tiering and pricing models of your solution. Learn how the Cost Optimization pillar of the AWS Well-Architected SaaS Lens identifies specific best practices that can help you improve the cost profile of a SaaS application. These play a key role in shaping the operational and scaling experience of your SaaS environment.

The reliability pillar of the AWS Well-Architected SaaS Lens focuses on the reliability posture of your SaaS solution. The SaaS Lens helps AWS customers assess the overall reliability of their SaaS architecture, providing prescriptive guidance that enables better alignment of their architecture. There are several considerations to keep in mind when building or optimizing a SaaS solution for reliability. While some apply to all modern solutions, others are specific to SaaS and that’s the focus of this post.