One of the important things that enterprises are looking for from the Cloud is the availability of Software as a Service to perform their business processes, so that business can concentrate on their core strengths, and not on building and maintaining software that perform repetitive tasks across the industry verticals.

Examples of repetitive business process that can be leveraged by major industry verticals are listed below; this list is not exhaustive but gives an idea why the enterprises consider SaaS as important part of their goal in reducing the CAPEX and OPEX and spend more on innovation.

• Automobile Industry
  • Emission calculations for a given set of vehicle conditions and fuel properties
  • Hazardous material handling reports for given set of chemicals or products
  • Creation of purchase orders specific to a vendor and country
  • Shipping and handling reporting for port of entry, customs etc.
• Financial Industry
  • Calculation of tax and federal-mandated calculations
  • Inter institution money transfer
  • Credit card validation
  • Address and identity validation
• Healthcare Industry
  • Insurance document creation / copay calculations
  • HIE / patient information transfer
  • Decoding of standard medical documents like X-rays and scans

This list goes on and on, so providing appropriate Software as a Service for industry verticals will be a major value proposition to the enterprises and, in the process, it will improve the market value of the SaaS provider too.

Industry Standard for Services & Data Exchange
Before the adoption of mainstream enterprise SaaS, large enterprises in multiple verticals have worked together and established standards for exposing services and for the exchange of data.

The Open Applications Group is a not-for-profit standards development organization. Founded in 1994, they are focused on building enterprise ready process-based data exchange standards for both B2B and A2A integration.

This group provides the definition of business messages in the form of Business Object Documents (BODs) and example business scenarios that provide example usages of the BODs. The business scenarios identify the business applications and components being integrated and the BODs that are used.

There are specific industry support groups within OAGIS, for example, Automotive Industry Action Groups (AIAG) caters to the service definition and data exchange standards specific to Automotive industry.

How Community Clouds / SaaS / Industry Standard Play Together
I have stressed in earlier articles that Community Clouds hold the key to the future industry growth on a whole for several industries like automotive, which are at crossroads. Problems like Handling Warranty, Quality Issues, Recall and associated compliance are common to all industries.

Realizing this importance as part of AIAG, The Warranty Work Group has developed a set of standard warranty codes in line with their project charter which called for a common, standards-based electronic warranty process between customers and suppliers in the Truck and Heavy Equipment Industry. OAGI compliant BoDs (Business Object Documents) have been developed to accommodate a global implementation. An industry-wide Proof of Concept pilot is being developed to validate the warranty code.

These common guidelines across the industry is designed to promote advances in consumer satisfaction and continuous warranty improvement by providing a recommended, robust warranty management program that instills a consumer-centric approach to warranty management. This approach begins with the end consumer in mind, providing tactics, techniques and case studies for all constituencies, particularly vehicle manufacturers and their suppliers. The guideline is organized in steps that partner organizations can take to proactively reduce warranty incident rates and risks associated with warranty events.

Again the handling of warranty claims and the subsequent analysis of the same is the key for improving the market share of any product in general and automotives in particular. We have seen major recalls from the leading automobile Manufacturer Toyota in the last year. Common SaaS model for warranty handling and analysis will increase the Overall safety standard of the industry and will increase the customer confidence about the industry and this in turn will benefit all the OEMs.

The future industries definitely looking for the following:

• Community Clouds
• SaaS Model For handling common issues like Warranty Handling like in the above example
• Open Group or equivalent Standards body for services and subsequent exchange of Business data
• Continuous adoption of the SaaS Model to the growing needs of the industry with representation from major software majors and OEMs

Summary
Real benefits of the Cloud Computing model will go beyond the dynamic infrastructure and on demand computing. For the enterprises saving 10% of the server cost is important, but that's not their core need. Adopting common industry standards for service end points, data exchanges and availability of SaaS model very specific to their community will hold the highest value proposition for them. This will not really impair the healthy competition between them, because the overall industry needs confidence of the consumer and solving their problems together will help them in this recession economy.

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