Why cloud-based application SAAS (Software as a Service) is important for businesses now-a-days?

Technologies are invented to simply and augment the capabilities of mankind. These technologies serves a single purpose that is to solve the day to day problems that are faced by everyone else. Nowadays a technology named as Cloud computing is increasing in popularity and offers a single-point-of-contact solution to most computing problems that are faced by organizations. Cloud computing is a subset of SaaS, abbreviated for Software as a Service platform. SaaS provides organizations scalable solutions that are either service based and offered as a part of their subscription plan. SaaS has gained huge popularity in recent times and have replaced modern computing ways of leasing and renting out hardware and configuring and setting up complex solutions. SaaS relieves the user of the configuring and assembling tasks for software and solutions that can be quite tedious and complex. In this article, we are going to have a look at the various benefits offered by Software as a Service implementation model.

But before that let’s get to the basics of SaaS

What is SaaS?

SaaS is known as Software as a Service. It is a technology that rents out software based cloud platform services that provides solutions to organizations that need them. SaaS is a replacement model for renting out any cloud based services that organizations can access. To access SaaS you only need a computer with an Internet connection. Organizations are relieved or freed from the hassles of configuring and renting out hardware as well as software services that needs to be configured and setup. Also the cost of renting and configuring is handled by organisation that provides the SaaS implementation. Organizations provides SaaS services based on a subscription fee or a user based license for accessing.

What makes SaaS so Great?

It is nothing but simple, easy to do list. SaaS makes all of the applications work on the cloud platform. You can provide access through a web browser or a thin client and you have got SaaS up and running for you. So what makes SaaS powerful, Well if you have used Craigslist or YouTube, you already know. When everything is processed as well as stored on the cloud, thousands or millions of users can access the same bit of information online. While you’re liking your friends Facebook post in Boston, her friend in Singapore might be commenting on it.

And the best part is that you don’t need a powerful computer to perform or do any powerful tasks.

SaaS has harnessed the power to answer questions like ‘How would my overall profits for North Carolina be impacted next week if I lower the prices of these three beer 12-packs by 2 dollars“ With SaaS you can recruit dozens of servers in the cloud to calculate the answer for you. Until recently you could also use Google Search over text message. That means that you could use a phone made 20 years ago to perform a computing task that involves thousands of servers.

Benefits of Software as a Service?

1)  Affordability:

Unlike traditional software, SaaS is sold based on a subscription basis that includes, maintenance, upgrades, and a degree of customer support. SaaS subscription model usually operate on a monthly subscription basis  and because of this there are no huge upfront costs.

The affordability is very good compared to many other traditional platforms such as PaaS and IaaS. The plans are good because they have a pay-as-you-go feature. Many organizations use SaaS because of affordability as well as the number of features that are offered in SaaS.

2)  Quick to Deploy:

For using SaaS solutions, all you require is a Web Browser with an internet access, and you are ready to go. On the other hand, traditional software make take weeks or even months to deploy. SaaS solutions do not require any kind of software to be installed and so you are able to access your new software almost instantly. SaaS solutions can be deployed almost instantly. The only thing required to access SaaS solutions is a computer that has an active internet connection.

If you have an Internet connection that has speeds ranging from 1MBPS to 5MBPS, then you are good to go.

3) Zero Infrastructure setup Needed:

While delivering business applications through SaaS, the complexity of understanding the underlying hardware and IT infrastructure is handled by your SaaS vendor. Users should not get worried about maintenance of the hardware, or which operating system version supports which da

tabase- Your SaaS vendor will take care of the hardware infrastructure for you, So you don’t have to worry about managing the hardware infrastructure. There is absolutely zero infrastructure costs that your organization will manage so you do not have to worry about how to set up the IT hardware infrastructure as well as its configuration. All of these things is being taken care of by your SaaS vendor.

4) Seamless Upgrades:

Your SaaS provider will manage all the software updates as well as hardware upgrades for you. Eliminating the need for installing and downloading patches. At any given time you can be rest assured that you will have access to the most recent hardware and you will have the most up to date software. There is a feature of on demand updates and hardware upgrades as and when needed. The systems can be upgraded as well as downgraded depending on what your organizational needs are. The SaaS vendor makes this easy for you so that you can concentrate on your work. Your account package will reflect the upgrades of software and hardware depending on your needs and requirements.

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5) Guaranteed Service:

As happens with most traditional software, you are not given a guarantee on how well the software will work, and how well it will perform. But with SaaS you can be rest assured. On the SaaS platform you are given a guarantee of having a 99.9% of uptime. In the event of there being a downtime, the SaaS vendor has to pay penalties to the user. During the tenure of the technology maturation there has not been a single case of hardware failure or downtime that has affected any organizational work or payloads. You can expect your IT infrastructure to be up and running almost 100% of the time. So there is no question of downtimes that arise due to hardware failure. SaaS vendors make 100% uptime for your hardware and software configuration possible due to multiple deployment sites being present that is spanned across multiple data centres located around the globe.

6) Backups as well as data recovery all done for you:

If you are familiar with traditional software, you will be aware that unless a costly automated solution has been implemented, the process of taking regular backups of your data on a weekly basis can be a laborious process at the best of times. SaaS solutions can eradicate this painstaking task, initializing automated backups with the user intervention and can thus ensure the integrity of your data. The data backup process can be set to be fully automated depending on your organizational requirements. This can be set up to daily backups or even weekly or monthly backups depending on your workloads.

7) Work Anywhere:

Provided that there is a working internet connection and a computer with a web browser to access. You can use SaaS services from anywhere in the world. Users are able to access data and work more efficiently from anywhere, thus making lives easy for home-workers or for those people that work across multiple sites or locations. The SaaS service is good if you have a high speed internet connection at your home or work place. Most companies nowadays prefer to work in the cloud and SaaS provides an excellent option to these companies or organizations.

8) Security:

In many instances, a company’s business information is more secure in a SaaS solution when compared to traditional software. SaaS offers a greater degree of security for any organizations data as they are non accessible to others depending on the permission set up. In many cases the SaaS vendor runs multiple instances of data centers which contacts the IT infrastructure to deliver the applications. In the event when one of the data center’s goes down, the remaining others pick up and deliver the SaaS services and solutions.

9) High Adoption Rates:

As the SaaS solutions are delivered over the Internet, there is virtually no learning curve that involves adopting a new solution as employees tend to already used to be working on the Internet.

10) Easily Scalable Infrastructure:

SaaS infrastructure and support systems are easily scalable and expandable. Both from the customers viewpoint as well as the vendors viewpoint. Upgrades and performance can be scaled easily to match the customer or clients demands as and when expected. These upgrades will incur additional costs as per the infrastructure but the cost is less than that of traditional software upgrade systems.

Conclusion:

We have seen the benefits offered by SaaS platforms. When compared to  traditional software solutions, the benefits and flexibility offered by SaaS solutions are plenty. It is feasible to rent out a SaaS solution that hire a third party company to develop traditional software for you organization. You will also be able to save time required for development of custom or traditional software solutions.