SaaS – the New Enterprise-Level 100% Web-Based Business Software
Ugur Akinci, PhD
November 04, 2007
Remember the days when you had to purchase or license your software and then install it on your server after making sure that you've met all the software, OS and hardware compatibility requirements? (Ahh, those requirements!...)
Remember how a week later you had to call your IT person and make sure she downloaded all the latest security patches, fixes and program updates?
And how you'd wake up in the middle of the night two days later wondering if your development guy remembered to back up everything in case there were another brownout? How you'd sweat thinking all those files and profits that blew right out the window when your servers crashed unannounced the year earlier?
Now, believe it or not, you can leave all that behind and sleep well every night.
Forget about things that come in a box.
Forget about licensing anything and signing long-term contracts and agreements.
Forget about buying new software, hardware, data storage, or anything else.
Do you have a machine connected to the Internet? Good. Then you've got yourself an enterprise-level business solution thanks to the Software as a Service (SaaS) paradigm. It's as simple as that.
Programs written as SaaS are all the rage these days because all of a sudden the whole burden of keeping your business processes flowing smoothly is transferred onto the shoulders of the SaaS provider. You take care of your business and they take care of your information flow and end-to-end management cycle.
The evolutionary path in software distribution leading from a disc in a box to ASP has at long last arrived at SaaS.
According to a recent Barron's report, "SaaS is one of the most important trends in software at present, and will become pervasive over the next several years."
The Gartner research group found out that SaaS sales soared to $6.3 billion in 2006 and will eclipse the $19 billion threshold by the end of 2011.
If you'd like to have a look at a great example of Travel and Expense Reporting SaaS, I recommend visiting http://www.web2expense.com
The future is here. And we're all better for it.
Remember how a week later you had to call your IT person and make sure she downloaded all the latest security patches, fixes and program updates?
And how you'd wake up in the middle of the night two days later wondering if your development guy remembered to back up everything in case there were another brownout? How you'd sweat thinking all those files and profits that blew right out the window when your servers crashed unannounced the year earlier?
Now, believe it or not, you can leave all that behind and sleep well every night.
Forget about things that come in a box.
Forget about licensing anything and signing long-term contracts and agreements.
Forget about buying new software, hardware, data storage, or anything else.
Do you have a machine connected to the Internet? Good. Then you've got yourself an enterprise-level business solution thanks to the Software as a Service (SaaS) paradigm. It's as simple as that.
Programs written as SaaS are all the rage these days because all of a sudden the whole burden of keeping your business processes flowing smoothly is transferred onto the shoulders of the SaaS provider. You take care of your business and they take care of your information flow and end-to-end management cycle.
The evolutionary path in software distribution leading from a disc in a box to ASP has at long last arrived at SaaS.
According to a recent Barron's report, "SaaS is one of the most important trends in software at present, and will become pervasive over the next several years."
The Gartner research group found out that SaaS sales soared to $6.3 billion in 2006 and will eclipse the $19 billion threshold by the end of 2011.
If you'd like to have a look at a great example of Travel and Expense Reporting SaaS, I recommend visiting http://www.web2expense.com
The future is here. And we're all better for it.