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Are you untangling definitions of Software-as-a-Service (SaaS)?
SaaS is often defined as a hybrid of the Hosted Applications Management or ASP model of software delivery, and software on demand, but where does it land?

Hosted application, software on demand or SaaS?

The key questions to be asked in determining whether a software solution should be considered as an older style hosted application, software on demand, or truly a SaaS application, are:

Question: Is the application built for one-to-many delivery over the web? e.g., Will the application be “multi-tenant” in that a single instance of the application—including web servers, application servers, and a database—will support more than one customer?

Question: Will the application be deployed at a third party location (i.e. hosting provider) rather than on the customers’ premises?

Question: Will the application be consumed over the public Internet?

Question: Can the application be designed to minimize need for programmatic customization, or utilize mass customization concepts through customization of standard features that are pre-built into the application?

Question: Is the pricing model subscription based? (e.g. monthly, with per-user subscription fees)

If the answers to the above questions are ‘yes’, then your definition of SaaS indeed is fully on demand.

 


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Increasingly, more and more software vendors are focusing primarily on the development of SaaS applications to meet evolving customer requirements. The on demand model of delivery has gained increasing popularity as a result of:

  • Increasing broadband penetration,
  • Improvements in remote access technologies,
  • General increases in computing capacity and corresponding cost reductions,
  • Virtualization technologies,
  • And, most recently, with improvements in technologies for development of Web-based applications.


    • All of these factors combine to create an environment today in which SaaS applications can be created with end user experiences that rival desktop applications for responsiveness and user interface. SaaS no longer means that an end customer is accepting a compromise solution which characterized ASP solutions of the late 90s.

    Quite by contrast, SaaS frequently allows customers to be able to enjoy substantial improvements in utility, uptime, security, reliability, usability, and cost advantages which would have been unimaginable less than a decade ago.

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