Features and Benefits

Why Use SaaS?

The overall benefit of SaaS is that an organization gets a better product at a lower cost. There is no capital investment. There is no need to hire an application support person or staff. There is no implementation delay, the solution is already there waiting for the user. There are no capacity issues – the user only pays for what they use, not for excess capacity (services are month to month – you add or delete users based on your needs). The hardware, software, licensing, maintenance, upgrading, security, and system availability are all the burden of the solution provider. SaaS allows the company or organization to concentrate on their core competencies and marketplace, not Information Technology.

The data design and architecture of SaaS applications are specifically built with a 'multi-tenant' backend, thus enabling multiple customers or users to access a shared data model. SaaS providers leverage enormous economies of scale in deployment, management, and support.

SaaS Features

Software and data is managed centrally rather than at each customer's site, enabling access to applications remotely via the Web – work at home, in the office, in multiple offices or the local cyber café – it makes no difference.

Upscale software such as antivirus because the cost is shared across a much wider range of users than the individual organization..

Application of business continuity and disaster recovery with no additional effort, cost, or time. Data is backed-up. Redundancy is the norm. Programs and data are mirrored to ensure continuity.

Centralized updating, which eliminates the need for end-users to download patches and/or upgrades.

In addition to the features mentioned above, SaaS software frequently has these additional benefits:

• More feature requests from users since there is frequently no marginal cost for requesting new features;
• Faster releases of new features since the entire community of users benefits from new functionality; and
• The embodiment of recognized best practices — since the community of users drives the software publisher to support best practice.

See What is SaaS? - for more information.
See Reliability and Performance for additional information.