SaaS
Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) is a revolution in the software industry, begun in earnest in the late 1990s and led early on by such firms as Salesforce.com (database) and Yahoo! (email), and recently by such firms as Google (Docs), Zoho, Microsoft (Live) and a myriad of other firms deciding to deliver their products via the web rather than in shrink-wrap packages.
Consuming your software via the SaaS model has many advantages:
- No more managing extensive networks of servers and other hardware
- Increased security through professionally managed and redundant server farms
- Version upgrades are continuous and less seismic in scale (e.g. moving from Raiser’s Edge 6.0 to 7.0)
- Access to data from anywhere
- Quicker user adoption
- Savings in software licensing costs
By many accounts, SaaS is the future of software, especially for small to medium-sized organizations. The following is a list of good reading on the subject to help you to form a deeper understanding of SaaS and how it could help to improve your organization.
http://www.cio.com/article/109706/The_Truth_About_Software_as_a_Service_SaaS_
http://blogs.zoho.com/general/what-does-saas-mean
http://www.salesforce.com/saas/
http://www.techsoup.org/learningcenter/software/page10866.cfm
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