It’s been variously called Software as a Service (SaaS), Cloud Computing, Application Service Provider (ASP), On-Demand applications, hosted or managed services – but it’s effectively all the same thing. The greyer haired IT professionals amongst us remember it as the bureau service. Historically, companies were required to buy, build, and maintain their own IT infrastructures despite exponential costs. Even a small business with a few PCs needs to find somebody in their organisation to take on the role of the IT Manager – to install the applications, manage the new versions that come from the author at regular intervals, make sure the systems and data are regularly backed up and stored securely off-site. To make sure they have a disaster recovery plan in place – all the necessary technical and management issues that can rise to a significant overhead in any company and need a large team in bigger organisations.
Software as a Service gives companies an alternative. Now they can plug in and subscribe to services built on world-class infrastructure via the Internet. All they need is a basic PC or Mac with an Internet Browser and an internet connection. Depending on the applications, the connection won’t need to be that fast, although if you need to work with large files or graphics, you would be better off with a faster broadband connection.
But it’s not just the infrastructure where SaaS has an effect. This is really turning the IT industry on its head. Think about it for a moment: a traditional software vendor sells a customer its software and the customer makes a big up-front investment and takes the risk that the project will launch on time and on budget and that the users will like the system. When a customer chooses a software service like ours, the risk is transferred to us. The software cost is spread as rental payments, which start small and build up over time. If the system doesn't work well or the users don't adopt it, we get fired. The good news is that we work with professional, best-of-breed SaaS partners and we know how to deliver.
Reducing risk is very important in an industry that has an average application life of less than three years and industry analysts say that about a third of the projects typically fail.
At D2C we are in the vanguard of this on-demand revolution, enabling companies to:
The value companies experience with Software as a Service far exceeds what they can expect with traditional software.Contact us to find out more.