SaaS – Advantages and Myths

Let us consider a situation in an organization, where a particular software is required to manage the multiple projects and the employee time sheets. Now, assuming that they decide to get the development of the software done in-house the initial step would be to bring the users together to collect and decide the feature list which then will be discussed with the developers. Developers and project managers will evaluate it against the available resources. So after about couple of meetings the users, developers and project managers will come to an agreement over the complete set of functionality and the time frame. (By this time, couple of weeks has already elapsed.) Generally speaking, the accepted time frame for rolling out new software done in-house is eighteen months. That amount of time is simply not acceptable in a dynamic and competitive business or industry. What’s more, a recent study has shown that almost a third of all in-house projects fail. Imagine waiting 18 months then getting disappointed by a program that just does not meet the needs or carry out the tasks the users want it to, after spending all the money on manpower, new hardware and software, as well as non-tangible things like lost opportunities.

  

SaaS has provided that comfort zone, It provides an opportunity to use – use immediately something that you want. SaaS is basically software solutions used as service. It is an acronym for Software as a service. The user pays for its usage. Or more effectively it can be called as software on demand.

The software is made accessible to the users via the web or WAN or LAN. There is no license fee attached with it but simple revenue model is pay-as-you-use.

Advantages

 There are several advantages of SaaS like it allows the users to pay for its usage only. So say like in an organization if only ten people are going to use it and that also for a short period of time, the organization doesn’t have to invest huge amounts of money in buying the license and getting it installed. They can use SaaS for any sporadic demands. 

1. As it doesn’t require any installation, it saves lots of system administration expenses and tasks. As the data resides on the service provider’s server, the data backup and security are also included in the service.
2. Moreover usually the SaaS software are very customer specific as they are functionality specific and are very scalable according to the customer needs and requirements.
3. Software updates are also done as a part of service, hence the users really can concentrate on the functionality.

 The maturity of a software as a service is gauged by its ability to configure, handle multi-users and scalability. The most matured SaaS will be able to configure itself to the client, can handle multiple clients and lastly the system can run on various servers without altering the software architecture.

Indian Software as a Service (SaaS) adoption is expected to reach USD 352 million levels in 2012 from 105 million USD in 2009, as per recent studies conducted by IT research firm Springboard Research. Enterprise spending on SaaS in India is expected to grow at 60%, as compared to 46% in Asia Pacific between 2008 and 2012.

Challenges

1. SaaS like any other new technology has faced resistance from its users. Many people think that SaaS is not good for an organization as they lose the control over their data and customizations. Quite contrarily SaaS takes off the extra burden of system administrators’ tasks like maintenance and up gradations.
2. Another myth is that SaaS requires a steep learning curve, what with signing up on one's own, with no one coming to the office for a demo but actually SaaS applications are built on the assumption that the end users will be non-technical people. So they are quite user friendly and intuitive. 
3. SaaS is aggressively opposed by the in-house developers, usually because they feel threatened about their job security. Actually it just puts the developers in the new roles. They are still required in the organizations to evaluate the various SaaS available in the market, build relationships, ascertain if they are technologically sound, and have the correct security policies in place.
4. Any SaaS provider has to be on the toes all the time. SaaS applications are built to give the user a near hassle-free experience since they are judged every month. If a service fails to provide the team a positive experience, the users will stop using it and move to the next best competitor. Thus most of the times, SaaS providers extend extra helping hand in form of support, online chats and online forums to give the customers extra comfort.

Some of the examples of SaaS are Salesforce.com (www.salesforce.com), Google apps (www.google.com), Fogbugz – a bug tracking tool (www.fogbugs.com) and TimeMerlin (www.timemerlin.com) – an employee time management tool to track timesheets and projects.