According to a Cisco survey, 83% of the best-performing US businesses planned a SaaS strategy in collaboration with cloud service vendors in the year 2017. Surprisingly, around 70% of them did not think to associate themselves in the year 2016.
Application Service Providers were the inception of hosting services and managing business applications, which is now been dominated by the fastest growing on-demand and hosting software, SaaS.
Software as a Service (SaaS) is a delivery and licensing model for many business applications today. SaaS has been incorporated by nearly all leading enterprise software companies.
SaaS solutions are based on multitenant architecture. With mainly two varieties of SaaS –
- Vertical SaaS, that works on the needs of a specific industry (software for healthcare, agriculture, real estate, finance industries)
- Horizontal SaaS, that focuses on a software category (marketing, sales, developer tools, HR).
SaaS parts in cloud computing include Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS), Platform as a Service (PaaS), Desktop as a Service (DaaS), and many more.
SaaS provides easy customization and less customer risk with much lower adoption cost and painless upgrades. SaaS sales reached $10 billion in the year 2010 and 59% of the cloud workflow is estimated to be delivered as a software as a service by the year’s end.
Also, 67% of the US IT healthcare organizations are currently running their business on SaaS applications.
Is SaaS more secure than the traditional data storage system?
Global security reports suggest that 76% of people using an on-premise software management system for their businesses are running two years behind as compared to those using SaaS. SaaS providers make sure there are new releases to your software which keep the bugs out.
Native SaaS companies offer tighter security. These companies staff full-time security teams who excel at tracking and addressing security concerns for your company.
Unlike an on-premise system, cloud providers store data on multiple fault-tolerant servers. This prevents the disruption of workflow by switching the data and application to another server when one server fails.
The statement “SaaS solutions are more vulnerable than an on-premise solution” is more of a myth. Cloud security has given a considerable list of reasons to switch towards SaaS. With the cloud’s geo-redundancy services, your work will continue to progress even during natural disasters or power outages.
SaaS stands out to be more flexible and pocket-friendly
Organizations are rapidly switching towards Software as a Service to spread their business. An IDC survey shares that Cloud solutions have reduced interruptions by 72%. Organizations regardless of size and scale are facing rapid changes and challenges like high operating costs, complex processes, technology complexities which affects the performance and profitability.
Agility is the key to having a cost-effective development operation. SaaS companies choose cloud-based architecture because-
- It can scale applications quickly and efficiently.
- It uses open-source technology.
- It offers flexible and accelerated deployment.
A robust and well-woven piece of software acts as a backbone in building any infrastructure. Also, a proper queuing system is important to run the app smoothly.
Did you know that SaaS development frameworks are used for building multi-tenant applications?
SaaS applications provide the leverage to test the application before making any purchases to ensure business value. SaaS vendors take part in ensuring the ongoing success of your business. The business model is built to proliferate profit which works on satisfaction and usage by the client.
As per the requirement of your business application, there are programming languages and frameworks tailored to solving problems, and each has specific functionality. These frameworks combine with important tools or platforms for better functionality and need.
A renowned computer scientist who won Turing award for his work in Artificial Intelligence, John McCarthy gave a speech to the MIT students in the year 1961 stating that “computation may someday be organized as a public utility”.
SaaS applications are easier to maintain. It offers a lot of safety nets, an automated testing framework and easy setup of an integrated environment. Additionally, frameworks contribute to the process of web development simplifying database configuration, services, APIs and many more.
The frameworks that contribute to automating the development activities –
- Ruby on Rails: This server-side development framework is highly sustainable. The code can be reused which saves time and effort to build an app. Popularly known as Ruby, it has a large development community to assist whenever and wherever you need. This flexible framework minimizes the development process by 30-40% with only a handful of changes required as per the requirement.
- Yii: This open-source development framework is built on PHP5 which provides a user-friendly interface and a clear design. This highly reliable and secure framework prioritizes performance optimization. Therefore, it is the best fit for any sized project. Yii runs on OOP standards with incredible tools to test and debug your app as well.
- MeteorJS: Written on Node.js, MeteorJS is an open-source isomorphic JavaScript framework. This cool platform is appropriate for building a simple and elegant website for personal use. This framework allows loading pages much faster and code can be recycled to use for developing IOS, web, Android or desktop version. Also, the integrated JavaScript stack has decreased the lines of code from 1000 to 10 lines making databases easily extensible to the end user.
- ExpressJS: The easiest and fastest possible way of creating web applications and APIs. Developed on Node.js, ExpressJS is another web application developing framework that has diverse features which can be obtained through plugins. Those well acquainted with the HTML, CSS and JavaScript languages and some MongoDB can build a mobile application on this framework as it does not require high-loaded calculating backend.
- Django: Django follows the Model View template (MVC) architecture. This complex data-driven website framework is built on Python that allows developers to construct apps in a speedy fashion. This secure and scalable platform meets traffic demands quite efficiently. Django might have some security wounds which can be treated with some SQL injection, cross-site request forgery, click-jacking, and cross-site scripting. This framework is loaded with all features from user authentication, site mapping, to content administration and many more.
- Laravel: One of the best PHP frameworks for building websites and apps both, from small ventures to large organizations. Laravel is flexible and compatible with any browser. This most widely-used framework doesn’t need any maintenance. The reason is its autoloading feature. It not only creates unique URLs but also fuses flexible features in your application including a modular packaging system. Laravel provides features like Object-oriented libraries, MVC support, Database Migration, Cross-site request forgery, authorization techniques and many more.
- Zend: Another PHP based framework which is a reliable, secure and modern open source platform to build web and app services. Zend framework is quite capable of using diverse PHP packages efficiently which result in the development of high-end websites. To make code easy, clean and understandable, Zend uses MVC Architecture which proficiently bifurcates the database and business logic from the presentation layer.
- Techcello: A multi-tenant framework for meeting the typical needs of business and products. With more than 30 modules, Techcello is used for designing, developing and managing operations with addressing various NFRs of any SaaS application. Its plug and play model enables easy integration into any SaaS application.
SaaS is booming in the market at great velocity. Some of the most innovative and successful SaaS applications which are being used today are –
- Amazon Web Services: Amazon is a well-known e-commerce platform that supports on-demand delivery through brilliant services like computing, storage, networking, database, analytics, deployment, management, and many more. Whether you are looking for computer power, database storage, content delivery, or any other functionality, AWS has the services to help you build a sophisticated application with increased flexibility, scalability and reliability.
- Microsoft Office 365: Microsoft applications such as Word, Excel, and PowerPoint can be delivered through any platform. This cloud-based service has spread out its roots for users to share, edit and create content with colleagues and customers. It enables connectivity through email and video conferencing, supporting the latest technologies.
- Slack: Redefining business, communicating, archiving and searching for solutions, Slack has the power to organize a team conversation, share files, documents, spreadsheets, PDFs and many more. Users can interact one-on-one using private and direct messages which are highly secure.
- Dropbox: With a lot of storage facilities, Dropbox is the best sharing and storage solutions for your business. This simple elegant interface allows creating and managing the list of members through a single access point. Tracking the team’s activity is simple with refined filtering and enhanced search. Time is reduced to half by giving the employee their own Dropbox account, and paying for everything on a single bill. Dropbox protects the company’s sensitive files with enterprise-grade security features. Easily link to every device with your Dropbox account, save something on your laptop, and it automatically syncs to your desktop computer, as well as your iOS, Android, Windows, or Blackberry mobile devices.
- Zendesk: The very scalable, reliable and flexible cloud-based customer service and ticketing platform. Zendesk’s efficiency provides insight into metrics to understand the health of your business. Zendesk provides the best experience for its customers through-
- Zopim – Zendesk chat software (a real-time live chat and messaging service).
- Automatic Answers – Zendesk integrated support (powered for solving customer’s questions and requests)
- Zendesk Voice – call center software (a phone support solution).
- HubSpot: A CRM, which manages the information related to the sales process of the business. HubStop provides free tier to manage CRM (Client/customer relationship management system) where you can sort deals won or lost, appointments scheduled, track performance, contract sent in one simple view. Every interaction is stored automatically within a neat timeline including calls with leads, email conversation, meetings, and notes.
- Adobe Creative Cloud: Creative cloud has the design tools to bring your brightest ideas to life. Everything from image composition to photo editing to website design, digital painting, 3D and augmented reality. This single piece of software has shifted to SaaS in the year 2013, which helped them not only to scale but improve their user base. Here you can build modern, responsive web pages with or without coding, design, and prototype for websites, mobile apps and the next generation of experience – from voice-powered devices to wearables.
- Salesforce: Salesforce enables authorized employees to access data at any time and place. By creating infrastructure-as-a service (IaaS), your business allows sales, marketing and support teams to work in sync and see important sales and customer data with more width and breath, freeing them up to generate new clients and better service existing ones.
- Skubana: Skubana powers orders, inventories and business intelligence for the high-volume brands and retailers. It unifies the tools to run your business, automate the repetitive tasks forecast for your profitability and demand planning. Skubana allows retailers to sell their product on multiple channels. A cloud based platform which is cost effective when implementing a custom inventory management system from scratch. Also, you can personalize your workflow using REST API for unlimited customization.
- Concur: An automated travel and expense management tool for business travel, it automates the expenses from the receipt to reimbursement, manages spent amount, catches duplicate invoices, captures and manages invisible bookings. Concur leverages breakthrough technologies like machine learning and AI to help meet business needs. All of your spending data is integrated to deliver the experience your employee expect with keeping full visibility in all dimensions of spend along with the location of your employee at every moment. Concur allows all your data at one place in order to spend more time on growing your business rather than worrying about tracking money.
SaaS has made the development cycle faster, making regular updates and reducing the risk of software piracy. Creating a bug-free environment, SaaS is economical when factoring equipment and staffing costs in the long run. With easy integration and flexible payments, SaaS is scalable according to the needs of the business.
To Conclude –
SaaS is one of the three main categories of cloud computing, alongside, infrastructure as a service (IaaS) and platform as a service (PaaS). After discussing these apps and services, you could imagine how enterprise solution software is flourishing, giving long term support. There are many more apps and service organizations that have used SaaS and excelled in their work profile. A major benefit of SaaS is cost over time; therefore, it would be wise to consider it.
Author Bio
Ashley Marsh is a senior content writer at Maan Softwares Inc. She has been writing for various companies for over four years on a variety of topics. Ashley specializes in technical writing with an emphasis in mobile app development, web design, and technology trends. Ashley finds covering the tech world to be an exciting and engaging experience as each day brings new and groundbreaking technologies to explore and write about. When she’s not writing about tech, she enjoys walking her two chihuahua-poodle mixes, Ginger and Pepper.