Over the past year, Software as a Service (SaaS) has grown to be a serious medium in the delivery of software. So much so, that more and more small to mid-size companies are placing this medium as a contender to the more Traditional-On-The-Premise software deployments and promoting its business advantages.

So what are these business advantages being promoted? I will outline these advantages tagging them as being financial, technical or operational.

1. Low Initial Investment (Financial): – The biggest complaint with Traditional-On-The-Premise software is the upfront cost. This usually is the total cost of the software, annual maintenance and support, and the cost to implement the software. For small and mid-sized companies this can be the deal breaker. With the SaaS model, companies rent the use of the software usually in the form of a monthly per user. Annual maintenance and support included.
2. Decrease time to deployment (Technical): – Traditional-On-The-Premise software requires quite a bit of resources ( hardware, software, security, technical personnel) that may not be readily available to small and mid-size businesses. With the SaaS model this is all left to the SaaS provider who since this is their business will have your solution deployed in hours rather than days or weeks. An underlying benefit of this advantage is that small or mid-size businesses can focus more on their business process rather than the technology side.
3. Accessibility (Operational): – Unlike Traditional-On-The-Premise software, which requires that a user to be on site or use such technologies as Terminal Services to access the software, SaaS is accessed and delivered via the internet thus making it use anytime and anywhere.
4. Reduced Technical Resources (Financial):- Let’s face it one of the biggest expenses facing small to mid-size companies is that of maintaining their technical resources which supports their Traditional-On- The-Premise software. SaaS solves this since the applications are housed in a state-of-the-art data center maintained by qualified personnel and to which their services are covered in the monthly subscriptions.
5. Access to the latest innovations (Operational):- With Traditional-On-The-Premise software, you typically have to wait for the next release to benefit from the latest innovations. Given the cost and complexity of moving to a new version, it may not even be practical to upgrade each time a new release becomes available. With a SaaS subscription, on the other hand, you benefit from innovations on an on-going basis. As soon as a new or improved feature appears in the application, you can begin using it.
6. Platform Independence (Technical):- SaaS based solutions are hosted centrally with the service provider. No software to be installed at the customer’s premises. The software can be accessed via the Internet. On Demand applications can be used by Windows, Linux or Mac users, providing true platform independence.
7. Focus IT initiatives (Financial/Operational):- With an outsourced IT resource SaaS substantially takes the burden off your IT staff in managing upgrades, troubleshooting problems for third party software applications. This help companies to direct their limited in-house IT resources towards more focused business oriented initiatives. It also means that this cost savings from using SaaS applications can be flat out saved, or reallocated to boost productivity through other services.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, January 6th, 2010 at 5:30 pm and is filed under General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.