Global IT solutions and services provider Dimension Data plc this week rolled out a new suite of SaaS hosting and application management services for growing partners and ISVs looking to simplify cloud hosting and management operations.

The new SaaS offering takes advantage of Dimension Data’s capabilities in SaaS hosting, systems integration and cloud IaaS, to deliver support services that improve SaaS application uptime, reduce costs and bolster app security, the company said.

Dimension Data’s SaaS Solutions should be particularly helpful to developers wrestling with the switch from transactional, locally-installed software products with perpetual licenses to pay-as-you-go hosted software services.  The offering provides guidance and operational best practices to help ISVs transition to a SaaS-based business model or scale to a growing audience, officials said.

Specifically, Dimension Data’s SaaS Solutions includes:

• Managed Hosting: Scalable infrastructure and technical support for a more scalable, flexible and reliable platform to host mission-critical applications.
• Public and Private CaaS:  Combines public and private cloud IaaS with enterprise-level SLAs and self-service provisioning and controls
• Application Operations: Offers management services for custom SaaS and Web applications including application deployment, application management, database management, compliance and performance optimization
• Technical Operations: Mitigates operational risk and reduces time to market 24×7 global support, patch management, system monitoring, operating system support and backup of production servers

“With analysts estimating the worldwide SaaS market in 2015 at more than $20 billion, software vendors will continue to transition their applications to SaaS to remain competitive,” said Steve Nola, CEO of the cloud business unit at the $5.8 billion South African IT services firm. “We have helped transition hundreds of software vendors to SaaS and, by leveraging our secure and reliable cloud infrastructure, in addition to our deep experience in SaaS hosting and global systems integration, we can offer a full lifecycle of IT solutions for SaaS providers.”

Dimension Data customer Astoria Software of San Francisco has been using Dimension Data’s SaaS Solutions to develop and deploy its content management wares and has seen its implementation cycle drop from one year to just 90 days, with sales cycle times reduced from 18 months down to just six months, Astoria President and CEO Michael Rosinski said.

“By adopting SaaS, we have completely changed our operations model and expanded our business opportunities dramatically,” said Rosinski. “I fully count on Dimension Data to provide an application infrastructure and service response that is much more robust than my customers would otherwise have in a traditional software model.”

“As SaaS vendors move to a frictionless sales model, they are challenged to control escalating operational costs and day-to-day cloud management issues,” said Treb Ryan, chief strategy officer for Dimension Data’s Cloud Solutions. “Our unique combination of services enables them to focus their valuable internal IT resources on more strategic projects and deliver a better user experience for their clients.”

The new SaaS Solutions suite is the latest in a series of efforts by Dimension Data to bolster its cloud-as-a-service offerings for partners increasingly transitioning their businesses to an all-cloud world. Over the summer, Dimension Data rolled out a new Cloud Backup option to its “Compute-as-a-Service” offerings, part of an ongoing trend among cloud providers to bake backup and recovery into hosted solutions.

The new Dimension Data Cloud Backup is an add-on to the company’s enterprise-class public, private and hosted CaaS products and will allow users to safeguard files, folders, systems, applications and data to Dimension’s cloud data centers “to ensure business continuity

The new cloud BCDR offering comes in three flavors to suit a variety of business sizes and needs: Cloud Backup Essentials, for basic file and folder backup and restore; Cloud Backup Advanced, which adds system-state backup and recovery; and Cloud Backup Enterprise, which includes application backup and restoration with other BCDR features.