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What is SaaS?  
Software as a service (or SaaS) is a way of delivering applications over the Internet—as a service. Instead of installing and sustaining software, you merely access it by way of the Internet, liberating your self from complicated software and hardware management.  
  
SaaS applications are sometimes called Web-primarily based software, on-demand software, or hosted software. Whatever the name, SaaS applications run on a SaaS provider’s servers. The provider manages access to the application, together with security, availability, and performance.  
  
SaaS Characteristics  
A great way to understand the SaaS model is by thinking of a bank, which protects the privacy of every customer while providing service that's reliable and safe—on a massive scale. A bank’s clients all use the same financial systems and technology without worrying about anyone accessing their personal information without authorisation.  
  
A "bank" meets the key characteristics of the SaaS model:  
  
Multitenant Architecture  
A multitenant architecture, in which all users and applications share a single, common infrastructure and code base that's centrally maintained. Because SaaS vendor purchasers are all on the same infrastructure and code base, distributors can innovate more quickly and save the valuable development time beforehand spent on sustaining numerous versions of outdated code.  
Easy Customisation  
The ability for every consumer to easily customise applications to fit their business processes without affecting the common infrastructure. Because of the way SaaS is architected, these customisations are distinctive to every firm or user and are always preserved via upgrades. That means SaaS providers can make upgrades more often, with less buyer risk and far lower adoption cost.  
Better Access  
Improved access to data from any networked machine while making it simpler to manage privileges, monitor data use, and ensure everyone sees the same information at the similar time.  
SaaS Harnesses the Consumer Web  
Anyone familiar with Amazon.com or My Yahoo! will be acquainted with the Web interface of typical SaaS applications. With the SaaS model, you may customise with level-and-click ease, making the weeks or months it takes to replace traditional enterprise software appear hopelessly old fashioned.  
SaaS Traits  
Organisations are now growing SaaS integration platforms (or SIPs) for building additional SaaS applications. The consulting firm Saugatuck Technology calls this the "third wave" in software adoption: when SaaS moves beyond standalone software functionality to develop into a platform for mission-critical applications.  
  
SaaS is one in every of several cloud computing solutions for business IT issues. Different ‘as-a-Service’ options include:  
  
Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) – the provider hosts hardware, software, storage and other infrastructure part  
Platform as a Service (PaaS)  
Everything as a service (XaaS) – which is essentially all the "aaS" tools neatly packaged together.  
The payment model for these kinds of companies is typically a per-seat, per-month cost based on usage – so a enterprise only has to pay for what they need, reducing upfront costs.  
  
SaaS v packaged software  
In the past, businesses purchased and relied on packaged software – from multi-application systems covering spreadsheets, databases and email to specialist packages for particular tasks like project management or enterprise intelligence.  
Packaged software – the drawbacks  
To use sales and marketing for instance, a enterprise could have used on-premises software for CRM.  
  
This software wanted to be evaluated, bought, installed, kept secure, maintained and repeatedly upgraded on in-house systems by the inner IT department.  
Using packaged software placed a burden on the IT group which might turn right into a bottleneck for projects.  
A business may end up needing to assist a wide variety of systems side by side, however find it tricky to integrate them as they had been coded and constructed differently.  
This approach additionally offered upfront prices for software and licences and doubtlessly servers for the software to sit on.  
The costs of the CRM software and hardware may imply it is just not affordable for small businesses. It could also be tough to scale up quickly in response to growth or change.  
Learn more about Sales Cloud and the benefits of cloud-based CRM  
  
The benefits of SaaS  
Elevated efficiency and price effectiveness are the reasons many companies give for turning to cloud-based SaaS solutions. The advantages include:  
  
Low setup and infrastructure prices  
You just pay for what you want with no capital expenditure that needs to be depreciated in your balance sheet over time.  
  
Accessible from anyplace  
Just connect to the internet and you'll work from wherever you could be by way of desktop, laptop, tablet or mobile or other networked device.  
  
Scalability  
You'll be able to adapt your requirements to the number of people who need to use the system, the amount of data and the functionality required as what you are promoting grows.  
  
Business leading service level agreements (SLAS) for uptime and performance  
So you have assurances that the software will be available to make use of when you want it – a difficult promise for in-house groups to make.  
  
Automatic, frequent updates  
Providers provide well timed improvements thanks to their scale and because they obtain feedback about what their prospects need. This frees up your IT department for different more business-critical tasks.  
  
Security at the highest level required by any customer  
Because of the shared nature of the service, all users benefit from the security level that’s been set up for these with the highest need.  
  
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