Article: SaaS customer perspective

From Software Business Community

Jump to: navigation, search
This is an article in the
Encyclopedia of Software Business.
Main page
[+] Encyclopedia articles
This Encyclopedia article is a STUB, implying that it missing most of its content.
Please help the community by contributing your expertise and experience to adding content to this article.

SaaS customer perspective

Contents


In the Software as a Service delivery model software applications run on the vendor's datacenter. The customer has full administrative control, but is not responsible of maintaining the software or the servers. The total costs of ownership in traditional software are often unknown, because there are many hidden costs. On the opposite those costs are knowable in the SaaS model.

Benefits

  • Total cost of ownership The total cost of is defined, there are no hidden costs like in traditional software. SaaS enables more flexible ways of payment than traditional software with low initial costs.
  • Speed of deployment Because there is no installation or configuration requirements for the customer, the sofware is usable almost instantly.
  • Reliability SaaS vendors usually have built a datacenter to be reliable and it is expencive for a single customer to build the same quality network, including multiple backup power sources, redundant servers, automatic failsafe, multiple internet connections and 24/7 engineering monitoring.
  • Security, data safety and disaster recovery The vendor provides an IT infrastructure with lower costs than a single customer could provide.
  • Optimized utilization The customer can buy the right amount of capasity to fit their needs ( data storage, bandwith, software features ) with on demand upgradability.
  • Regular automatic updates The customer doesnt need to upgrade software. The software is updated automaticly in the service providers datacenter.
  • Enables the customer to focus more on core competencies Because the customer doesn't have to worry about installation, updates or maintenance, they can focus more on their core competencies.

Risks

  • Less application tailoring and integration options
  • Increased risk of losing data
  • Online service performance issues
  • Binding to long term contracts



Relevance to software business

Summary of the research literature

Practical perspectives

Opportunities for research

Links


References

[1] Bret Waters, Software as a service: A look at the customer benefits, Journal of Digital Asset Management, Volume 1, Number 1, 1 January 2005 , pp. 32-39(8)




0

Retrieved from "http://swbcommunity.org/swbc/index.php/Article:_SaaS_customer_perspective"