SaaS for dummies

If you’re confused about SaaS, you’re not alone. What is SaaS? SaaS software or Software as a Service is a very mature area of cloud computing. SaaS hit its stride with the customer relationship management (CRM) market and has since spilled into other areas such as the collaboration market, the enabling tools, and management environments.

What are the benefits of SaaS?

The SaaS platform has many benefits. Here’s some of them.

1. It is affordable – SaaS is usually sold on a subscription basis which includes upgrades, maintenance and some form of customer support. The subscription model operates on a monthly basis, and as such there are no substantial up-front costs which make it very affordable.

2. It is quick to deploy – The only requirements for SaaS are a web browser and internet access. This is very different from traditional software which usually requires weeks or sometimes months to roll out. SaaS doesn’t need any software to be installed which means that the user is able to access new software immediately.

3. There is zero infrastructure involved – The complexity of underlying IT infrastructure involved when delivering business applications through SaaS is handled by your SaaS vendor. Users do not need to concern themselves with the maintenance of the hardware or which operating system version supports your database. All of this is taken care of by your SaaS vendor.

4. Backups and data recovery are seamless – It is very arduous to perform backups of data on a weekly basis unless an expensive automated solution has been implemented. SaaS software takes care of this task by automatically backing up data without user intervention which ensures the integrity of your data.

5. High adoption rates – SaaS solutions are delivered over the internet which means that there is no learning curve with using a new solution. This is because employees tend to already be used to working over the internet.

SaaS is being adopted by many large players in the market today for many more reasons than the ones stated above. It is simple, effective and secure while being affordable. Take a look at SaaS and see for yourself.