The SaaS Delivery Model is a revolutionary and has the potential to change the relations of Information technology (IT) concerned departments and their roles in computing services. It is a reliable software-delivery mechanism that IT departments can look up to, to facilitate and change their focus from merely distributing and supporting applications to having control and enabling effective management that those very applications provide.
It is a method of providing hosted software applications to clients in a cloud computing environment. SaaS delivery is the spine of an emerging software model that does away with the need for clients to incur the costs of purchasing or maintaining expensive application servers and software. With SaaS delivery, the capital and operational expenses normally associated with hosting on-premise software applications is shifted from the client to the cloud software services provider.
The cloud SaaS provider is able to spread its capital and operational expenses out across a large customer base. Utilizing SaaS, will ensure that business goals and set out objectives are met because it is provides value for businesses by offering services that are both from external and internal sources. It corresponds those services to a business’ goals.
History
It is mainly compared to the application service providers (ASPs) of the early 90s which provided businesses with a number of applications. But this foremost attempt at internet delivery had more to do with the past on-premise applications rather than the current SaaS applications. Fields such as architecture used the old model frequently in their enterprise, which had not yet developed into the more modern application management. The traditional applications were limited in regard to the volume of information that one could share, in fact they were single-tenant applications. These limited systems posed economic challenges in that they were not economically beneficial as compared to the more resourceful locally installed applications.
SaaS Now
The current applications will use the benefits of centralization to their successful benefit. This will be done by providing a multi-tenant architecture as opposed to the single-tenant of the past, along with giving a wide range of features which would be competitive parallel to on-premise applications. This will enable information sharing and software delivery to be effective and expand businesses. It is sold using a subscription model with consumers paying their current fee as they go on using the application. The fees are different depending on the application you are using. For cost management it is important to realize that different providers use various charging schemes. Some providers charge their rates according to usage while other providers price a flat rate amount on unlimited access to some or the entire application’s features. This SaaS application is made available either directly through a vendor or through an aggregator. An aggregator is a go-between which samples all and bundles all application offerings from different vendors and dishes them out as part of unified application set up.
How it works
SaaS is widely and simply understood as a software deployed as a hosted service that can be readily accessed from the Internet. SaaS delivery uses a one-to-many model for software delivery, where a single SaaS provider supplies software services to multiple users. Under the SaaS delivery model, clients are assessed fees based on the types and amount of services used correspondent to usage. In order to be profitable, SaaS applications have to attract a large customer base, to compensate the expenses associated with being a SaaS provider in the cloud.
Proprietary mission critical applications are unsuitable for the SaaS delivery model. It hosts applications and data in a central place, deploying and upgrading applications accordingly and facilitates access to end users through the Internet via a smart-client application or through a browser. Application Program Interfaces (APIs) are designed to open up access to applications data and functions so that composite applications are created by developers. The application has tools that enable customers to modify their workload, data or even the applications’ operation according to how they want to use them. Sensitive data can be kept safe through security mechanisms. This is because organizations are given full control over the administration of their users. The same requirement applies to security features that protect client to and enable them to determine their own user roles. It is focused on deploying software applications that have the p reach for a large market.
The Advantages of SaaS
This application is very beneficial. It has the capabilities of making one’s enterprise a dynamic and proactive organization in software acquisition. It has been established that deploying large scale software systems in an organization is a huge task. It can cost a company a fortune and it requires a large personnel to integrate the software with the organization’s other systems and data. The monetary requirements and staff needed potentially squeezes small scale organizations out of the reach of software which they would do well with and bigger ones face a magnitude of costs.
Managing Risk
One of the benefits is that you can be able to manage the risks of software acquisition. It allows organizations to reduce the cost of using and maintaining software. It significantly reduces the commitment of resources because SaaS delivery model does not require huge infrastructure. The cloud services provider bears the expense of developing and maintaining the applications and hardware on which the applications run. In the SaaS delivery model applications can be planned and executed with pleasant ease. It creates efficient time to value intervals.
Focus
It also handles the at times arduous and voluminous tasks of deploying applications, facilitating their daily running, keeping tabs on performance, upgrading, testing and installing and ensuring availability. By transferring responsibility to the SaaS delivery model, it aligns the high-value tasks to the goals of the business. This enables IT staff of an organization to function effectively and proactively working with business units to address business needs and give advice on how best to use information technology to improve business. The IT staff can contribute to the success of a business by using SaaS.
Considerations
For those companies which want to embrace SaaS delivery model, there are a number of considerations to think about. There are political, technical, legal and financial considerations. Politically speaking it has to be embraced by all in the company or a sizable majority. It is important to measure as little resistance as possible. Technically, the amount and volume of data to be transmitted to and from the application matters. In a room it will deliver data within minutes but in a situation where data is shared across the country it could take several hours. In the case of distribution, it would be advisable to consider the latency of the network.
On the financial side, it is important to decide whether the organization is ready to use the SaaS delivery model at what frequency because that determines the cost and finally, legally, you might have to take into account regulatory laws governing recording and recordkeeping.
The SaaS delivery model is a crucial requirement in an organization’s set up because it eases tasks, it reduces costs and risks in software acquisition, it makes work be effectively done and it prioritizes organisational goals and targets.
