Why SaaS?

Why or What is SaaS?

Software as a Service (SaaS, typically pronounced 'sass') is a model of software deployment where an application is hosted as a service provided to customers across the Internet. By eliminating the need to install and run the application on the customer's own computer, SaaS alleviates the customer's burden of software maintenance, ongoing operation, and support.

Using SaaS also can conceivably reduce that up-front expense of software purchases, through less costly, on-demand pricing. Here’s what’s driving customers to take advantage of SaaS solutions:

SaaS Adoption Drivers

Everyone has a computer: Most information workers have access to a computer and are familiar with conventions from mouse usage to web interfaces. As a result, the learning curve for new, external applications is lower and less hand-holding by internal IT is needed.

Computing, itself, is a commodity: In the past, corporate mainframes were jealously guarded as strategic advantages. More recently, the applications were viewed as strategic. Today, people know it’s the business processes and the data itself—customer records, workflows, and pricing information—that matters. Computing and application licenses are cost centers, and as such, they’re suitable for cost reduction and outsourcing.

Web systems are reliable enough: Despite sporadic outages and slow-downs, most people are willing to use the public Internet, the Hypertext Transfer Protocol and the TCP/IP stack to deliver business functions to end users.

Security is sufficiently well trusted and transparent: With the broad adoption of SSL, organizations have a way of reaching their applications without the complexity and burden of end-user configurations or VPNs.

Wide Area Network's bandwidth has grown drastically following Moore's Law (more than 100% increase each 24 months) and is about to reach slow local networks bandwidths. Added to network quality of service improvement this has driven people and companies to trustfully access remote locations and applications with low latencies and acceptable speeds.

Painless Upgrades:Because the SaaS provider manages all updates and upgrades, there are no patches for customers to download or install. The SaaS provider also manages availability, so there’s no need for customers to add hardware, software, or bandwidth as the user base grows.