Research on The Informatization Management of Enterprises under The

Research on The Informatization Management of Enterprises under The

SaaS Model

Li Yan

Anyang Institute of Technology, Anyang, Henan, 455000, China

E-mail:[email protected]

Abstract

The rapid development of global economy and information technology has made the degree of informatization a decisive factor which affects the development of SMEs in China. Insufficient funds and human resource shortage has become a great resistance that restricts the development of informatization in SMEs. The SaaS model presented in this paper is just able to make up for these deficiencies and provide users with services and management through software mode. The SaaS model presented in this paper is a single-instance multi-user system. Using shared Schema mode and mixed access mode, it is very secure and practical, and can save the cost of enterprises and accelerate the development of enterprises.

Keywords:

1. Introduction

Global economic integration has created an opportunity for the leaping development of Chinese enterprises. Chinese enterprises have the opportunity to take advantage of resources of the world to promote economic development and to give play to domestic resource advantages, market advantages and late-developing advantages. With their products enjoying a broader market, domestic enterprises can obtain economic benefits in wider ranges. But it should also be seen that the level of management and informatization of domestic enterprises are also confronted with greater challenges under the pressure of international competitions. Global economic integration is a chain where various countries establish their own position in this chain in accordance with their actual situation. When the chain advances in development, the enterprises need to keep pace with the times. The development of modern enterprises has gradually evolved from the development of single enterprises to the common development of the whole industrial chain, and has achieved a win-win situation for the industrial chain through in-depth cooperation with their partners.

In the global industrial chain, what lies in a dominant position are large enterprises, namely the so-called “chain masters”. They integrate the upstream and downstream resources to promote the forward development of industrial chains to achieve the maximization efficiency of the industrial chain. SMEs get themselves combined with industrial enterprises and seek their status relying on the close cooperation with “chain masters”. Accompanied by many years of the development of informatization, more and more of the "chain masters" have volunteered to get internationalized and greatly enhance their informatization degree. Especially in China, a top-down manner is adopted in informatization, that is to say, dominated by the government and coordinated by enterprises, informatization is promoted from tops to grassroots, from large enterprises to small and medium-sized enterprises, causing a huge gap in the level of informatization between small and medium enterprises and large enterprises.

With the enhancement of the level of informatization of large enterprises, “chain masters” focused on business development needs, and required their upstream and downstream partners of SMEs to be in coordination with their own business, forcing the SMEs to get passively internationalized and informative to maintain the simultaneous development of large enterprises and international enterprises. In fact, the "passiveness" of small and medium-sized enterprises showed the lack of informatization awareness on the one hand and the lack of suitable solutions for the informatization of SMEs on the other hand. Restricted by their own strength, SMEs stressed the "big concept" of investing for the future, so "integration schemes" are neither applicable nor necessary. They need to have targeted and effective products and services which either solve problems in management immediately or improve operation efficiency immediately.

Journal of Convergence Information Technology(JCIT) Volume8, Number6,Mar 2013

Take China's enterprise management software market for example, 68% are comprised of SMEs. But as far as individuals of SMEs are concerned, their capital budgets, human resource reserves and resource conditions can bear no comparison with large enterprises in the face of informatization. This aspect has restricted the pace of the informatization of SMEs. Statistics show that nearly 20% of SMEs are of the opinion that lack of funds is the major obstacle in the construction of informatization, that what enterprises have invested on hardware accounts for more than 80% of what has been invested on the entire construction of informatization whereas supporting software investment is relatively backward, and that “valuing hardware but despising software” has resulted not only in the occupation of a large amount of money but also in the restricted play hardware give to their efficiency.

At present, a major challenge in getting combined into global economic integration for domestic SMEs is the follow-up of the level of informatization. Global economic integration is carried out accompanied by a worldwide informatization. It can be said that informatization has directly promoted the integration of global economy whereas the integration of global economy has further strengthened informatization.

The SaaS software delivery model enables SMEs realize informatization quickly without increasing IT investment. Meanwhile, a significant reduction in informatization brings risks. That is why enterprise management software based on the SaaS model has occupied a certain market share in the international market at present, and is favored by many SMEs. Particularly in domestic SME markets which are very large in number and whose IT infrastructure is weak, many domestic and international enterprise software developers have been optimistic about this model, and large amounts of resources have been invested to carry out corresponding research and development work. This article attempts to achieve a the SME system platform based on the SaaS model by analyzing the needs of small and medium-sized enterprises for the management software, and research on the key technical problems involved in its implementation and find solutions.

2. Analysis of the management of informatization by enterprises

The informatization of enterprises refers to the process of using modern information technology to continuously raise the efficiency and level of production, operation, management, and decision-making to improve economic efficiency and competitiveness of enterprises through the in-depth development and widespread utilization of information resources. Seen from a managerial point of view, the informatization of enterprises is the process of systematizing, integrating and automating the information in enterprises, and also that of planning, realizing, operating and managing the information systems of enterprises.

With the transition of systems and the gradual increase of market pressures, enterprises began to appreciate the importance of information and have also basically reached a consensus that informatization can promote the development of enterprises. Overall, this awareness is growing, but there is still a great difference between various enterprises in the emphasis put on practical operations.

Changes in the competitive environment urged enterprises to find a way out from informatization, and the maturity of information technology as well as the reduction of costs also made enterprises more enthusiastic in raising the level of informatization. In the drafting of middle-and-long-term development plans, many large and medium-sized enterprises all take information construction as the key task to be accomplished in the few years to come. Meanwhile, the development of networks has created extremely favorable conditions for SMEs to utilize information and rise rapidly, and their enthusiasm for information construction compares quite favorably with that of large and medium-sized enterprises.

Informatization can solve two aspects of the problems, the improvement of internal management of enterprises and the external development of markets. Therefore, SMEs are thinking of its value much more seriously than ever. In addition, enterprises have also undergone a noticeable change in their choice of information technology products as financial crisis has confronted enterprises with a more complex and difficult development environment.

(1) Cost control is crucial

SME users hope to be able to purchase management software at a lower cost and implement the informatized management of enterprises. Especially medium-sized enterprises which need to purchase high-end management software have raised more stringent demands for cost control.

Whether they are users who have already implemented informatization or they are SMEs who are ready to buy management software, they all expressed clearly that they hope the system used can directly solve their practical problems, bring them more dominant value, and even hope to be able to get quick results. Take some foreign trade export enterprises for example, they have re-locked the target market to the domestic market, and hope they will be able to open up the domestic market quickly, so the use online marketing tools has become a very effective way.

The features of SaaS services just fully compensate for such prominent defects as the low level of informatization and the shortage of capital and professionals in the SMEs in our country. SaaS services cater to the needs of the development of SMEs relatively well as SaaS requires lower costs to be constructed and maintained and have lower thresholds and risks in application.

3. SaaS Introduction

3.1 Concepts of SaaS

SaaS (software as a service) is a mode of providing software through the Internet. Users have no more need to buy software. Instead, they lease Web-based software from the provider to manage operation activities of enterprises. They have no need for software maintenance as the service provider will carry out the discretionary management and maintenance of software. For individuals, SaaS brings many conveniences to our work and life. For many small enterprises, SaaS is the best way to use advanced technology because it has eliminates the need for enterprises to buy, construct and maintain infrastructure and application software. In recent years, the rise of SaaS has enabled small and medium-sized enterprises to cut down their costs.

3.2 Features of SaaS

The SaaS platform is built on the Internet and all users have to access it through the extra-net WEB. The difference between this and other information is that common information systems are built on the Intranet for the internal use of enterprises.

(1) Popularization of the service

SaaS platform services are oriented towards popular enterprises. It is not developed for any particular enterprise but to provide a lot of services in the form of packages to meet the demands of the majority.

(2) Software lease

SaaS has its application software or services provided to many enterprises by way of lease. Enterprises needn’t spend large sums of money or obtain commercial services at the beginning. Instead, application service providers have its application software or services provided to enterprises by way of monthly lease or by the number of times, thus reducing the cost and threshold of access to hardware and software.

3.2.2 Flexibility

Over time, some of the information in the information management systems of enterprises and units needs to be inevitably modified, for example, changes in the organization of enterprises and units, changes in business processes, and changes in business forms and so on. The platform provides such tools such as data dictionary customization, application customization and workflow customization to maintain the contents of each application subsystem. Ordinary users with some computer knowledge can complete most of the modification and maintenance work by using the platform after receiving training.

3.2.3 Security

The platform provides each application subsystem with a unified security service, including user authentication, rights authentication and so on. At same time, the platform's security service can be combined with the security scheme of the entire system to provide all-round security solutions.

Licensing Center includes user management, role management, rights management, system configuration, and system log and so on.

3.2.4 Scalability

What the platform faces is the small and medium-sized enterprises of the whole country, so its development and operation mode is characterized by its long cycle, a wide coverage, many influencing factors, irregularity and so on. The open, flexible development and maintenance mode provided by the platform is able to adapt to the needs of informatization of all kinds of small and medium-sized enterprises.

4. Platform design of SMEs

SaaS-based management software for SMEs should build on top of an applications platform capable of carrying on a high-concurrency, high data volume to respond to the challenges of system performance, data security, system scalability brought by the SaaS model. In this paper a system architecture that supports multiple users and shared Schema data model with flexible scalability and a variety of security will be built. It can support SMEs to implement advanced management methods and management philosophy, bring efficiency in the production and management, and improve core competitiveness.

4.1 single-instance multi-user system

Single-instance multi-user system differs with other SaaS platform in that it is more configurable, multi-user efficient and sealable.

Configurability, when talking about it in the traditional usage of locally installed software environment, modifying part of the code directly in secondly development to adapt to the needs of the current user is the more common solution. But in the environment based on the using of SaaS model, if any part of the business applications is modified, this modification may affect all current customers using the environment of. Therefore, in general, in the environment using SaaS model, customers using metadata to configure the interface of the system as well as the interaction behavior for the end-user. This shows that a big challenge in the design of SaaS system itself is to ensure that the process of configuring software applications itself is simple and easy for customers to understand and use. And there should be no need to consider to pay any additional development and maintenance costs.

Efficient multi-client support is the most important part of the system architecture. For example, when a user is trying to access customer data through the company's customer relationship management applications based on the SaaS system, the application it connected to might be simultaneously used by the users of hundreds of terminals from different enterprises. Theoretically, the user does not know that the other concurrent user is also accessing the system. This very common scene in the SaaS model requires the system to support multi-user to share system resources to a maximum degree, in the meantime, can still strictly distinguish and isolate data belonging to different clients.

Scalability means it must be taken into account in the design that the largest degree of concurrency, and a more efficient use of system resources. For example, technologies such as optimizing resource lock persistent, using stateless process, using resource pool to share critical resources like threads and network database connection, caching reference data technologies and large database partition must be taken into account.

4.2 The multi-user data model

Figure 1 Shared schema mode

This kind of data model of shared database and shared schema has the lowest hardware and maintenance costs. And each server can support the largest number of customers, therefore very suitable for application in the development of the SME management applications. However, for all of our customers using the same set of data tables, it is needed to spend additional development costs to ensure data security, in order to ensure that a customer never has access to the data of other customers when abnormalities happens in the system.

Under such sharing Schema, the process of restoring the backup data is relatively complex compared to other SaaS system having a separate database or independent schema. System administrators extract backup data to a temporary server space, select the data table needing to restore, also need to additionally select the customer records needing to restore, and then import them to the main database of the system. If you need to import a large number of records when restoring, the performance of database service of the system will be greatly affected, and all customers using the system will also be affected.

However, after all, this data model minimizes server resources used by the SaaS system to serve as many customers as possible, so it is suitable for use in SMEs.

4.3 Data Security

Security is an extremely important part of any software, so the innate features of the SaaS system make security a top priority of its system architecture and special concern is shown by customers. In the SaaS system here, solutions are given mainly from two aspects, access security and data security, through the mode based on role authentication and authorization mechanisms as well as hybrid encryption.

From the viewpoint of the essence of the SaaS system, it requires potential customers to give up control over part of their business data. For enterprise management software, it includes financial data, trade secrets, and employee records and so on. Therefore, the SaaS system must be a system that is able to provide in depth defense, namely, different threats from the inside and outside of the system in different situations can be effectively prevented through multi-level security settings.

4.3.1 The proxy access mode

A middle layer is used between customers and the data source, giving customers the idea that the current front-end data shown is the whole of the data in the database. In the SaaS system here the model of a hybrid proxy access and a trusted subsystem account to deal with data access. In the proxy access mode, the database allows different users to access different data tables, views, queries, stored procedures and other database objects. When a user carries out the business operation of a certain required direct or indirect accessing of the database at the front end, the process will function as the agent of the identity of that user and use his security authentication information (Security Context) to access the database. Therefore, a mechanism similar to the Kerheros delegation can allow the system processes to connect to the database with the identity of a user.

Figure 2 The proxy access mode 4.3.2 The trusted mode

In the trusted subsystem account mode, system processes always use their own process authentication information to be connected to a database, this process authentication information has nothing to do with the user. In this case, the database will give the access and operation of that process the corresponding authority of objects within the database. Any additional security controls must be achieved in the system process level, not in the database level to prevent unauthorized users from accessing database objects that are not open to them. This mode does not need to configure each user individually with the authority over the access of database objects, thus making the security management work relatively simple, but this also gives up to some extent the control over the safety of individual user accessing database objects.

Figure 3 The trusted subsystem account mode 4.3.3 The mixed access mode

In this SaaS system, data access is handled by mixing agent access and trusted subsystem account mode, which can use security mechanism in the database itself to guarantee to the greatest extent the logical isolation of customer data without creating complex security models.

Figure 4 The mixed access mode

This hybrid model involves creating a database access account for each client to allow them access to database objects that belong to themselves. When a user carries out in the front end the business operation of a certain required direct or indirect database access, System processes will use the authentication information from a database access account rather than that from an end-user to access database. Here authentication information can be obtained immediately through the use of proxy access mode. Necessary authentication information can also be obtained to access database through the use of security token services containing a group of returned encrypted login authentication information which is established for clients. The database has no need to distinguish which end-user the system process is from, and give process access clients all authority over data. Security codes used to prevent unauthorized end-users from accepting or modifying particular data are still achieved in the layer of system processes.

5. Conclusion

The biggest advantage of the SaaS application model is the adoption of leasing. Users’ PCs of enterprises are given access to the SaaS operating platform through the Internet. By adopting the SaaS model in carrying out informatization construction, enterprises can enjoy a whole set of conveniences from informatization, such as servers, networks, system administrators as well as online office management, customer relationship management, enterprise planning management, financial management. Thus not only is the application cost of information saved, users are also given access to the convenience and speed brought by advanced technology. Services based on SaaS models provide flexible custom functions, so users can order the models needed in accordance with the needs of business management, and can also adjust their systems to support the change and development of their enterprises just in order to “be used on demand”. The SaaS application mode, which is very suitable for the information management demands of SMEs in current China, can facilitate their rapid, healthy and efficient development.

6. References

[1] Yongqing Zheng, Chengliang Sang, Xiangxu Meng, Qingzhong Li, "Tenant Oriented Lock Granularity Adjustment Strategy in the Shared Storage Multi-tenant Database", JDCTA, Vol. 6, No. 19, pp. 152 ~ 161, 2012

[2] Yu-Hui, Wang, "Extending Information System Acceptance Theory with Credibility Trust in SaaS Use", JDCTA, Vol. 6, No. 6, pp. 266 ~ 275, 2012

[3] Ying CHEN, Runtong ZHANG, Haoyue LI, Ruixia LI, Yuhong GAO, "CALIS-based Cloud Library Services Platform Model", AISS, Vol. 3, No. 6, pp. 204 ~ 212, 2011

for SaaS", JDCTA, Vol. 5, No. 1, pp. 173 ~ 185, 2011

[5] Chanjira Sinthanayothin, Wisarut Bholsithi, "Dental Application: The Steps toward the Implementation of the CephSmile Plus Services", IJACT, Vol. 3, No. 3, pp. 210 ~ 221, 2011

[6] Lin Fan, Zeng Wenhua, Jiang Yi, Li Jianmin, Liang Qi, "A Group Tracing and Filtering Tree for REST DDos in Cloud", JDCTA, Vol. 4, No. 9, pp. 212 ~ 224, 2010

[7] Anirban Kundu, Chandan Banerjee, Priya Saha, "Introducing New Services in Cloud Computing Environment", JDCTA, Vol. 4, No. 5, pp. 143 ~ 152, 2010

[8] Ching Hsu, "Web 2.0-based SaaS for Community Resource Sharing", JDCTA, Vol. 5, No. 5, pp. 132 ~ 141, 2011

[9] Joseph Cosmas Mushi, Guan-zheng Tan, Felix Musau, Cheruiyot Wilson, "Performance Analysis of Recharging Scheme of M-SaaS through M-banking", JCIT, Vol. 6, No. 7, pp. 140 ~ 153, 2011