Software As A Service And Small Business
The new buzz word around IT and business sectors is SaaS (Software as a Service); and the word is getting extreme popularity with the recession. Many market experts say that SaaS is the technology for overcoming recession. This can be true, as now software as a service is truly revolutionizing the way of business process management; and also enabling many small businesses to outperform big competitors of the industry. Small businesses which adopted SaaS, now have access to most advanced business applications for lowest costs; and with SaaS the greatest advantage a small business holds is being small with less number of employees.
Surveys and statistics show that SaaS industry is growing extremely fast with more than 12 percent annual growth. SaaS products are expected to constitute 20 percent of all business systems by 2012; for many small businesses this percentage can be over 50 then. Many new SaaS vendors are coming up and new products are released every day. The growing competition in SaaS sector and integration of SaaS applications with free and/or open-source tools on web (like Google Analytics, Socializing tools and OpenOffice) are making SaaS products increasingly cheap.
Software as a Service way of software delivery helps small and medium sized businesses in many ways. The primary advantage is their cost effectiveness offering quick ROI. There is not cost related to software purchase, installation, database management, system maintenance, in-house networking, etc. The only things a SaaS user must have are a Web browser and internet connection. SaaS users can access the software from any where in the world using any devise allowing internet browsing. There is virtually no cost related to system maintenance, to update software or to solve problems; only cost is monthly subscription fee calculated per user. This makes SaaS favorable for financial budgeting, as you can easily predict software costs once you estimate the number of software users.
Other advantages of SaaS products includes; the need of only computer operating and internet surfing knowledge, high degree of customization, higher mobility, integration with most advanced business applications, up-to-date tools and free software update by vendor, web-based interface which is easy to understand and configure, sophisticated analysis and reporting tools, real-time database updating and centralized remote database which is automatically backed up, tools for planning business strategies, increasing number of open-source products, and continues. But just like any other software application the level of benefit will depends upon the product company chooses and the way in which it is implemented.
Like any other type of products available, SaaS also has many limitations and drawbacks. It is not suitable for companies with increased number of employees, it offers less security to companys data, it requires too much to and fro movement of data across internet, it discards any internal network or database a company has already developed, and it is not for areas where there is not internet or slow internet.
Surveys and statistics show that SaaS industry is growing extremely fast with more than 12 percent annual growth. SaaS products are expected to constitute 20 percent of all business systems by 2012; for many small businesses this percentage can be over 50 then. Many new SaaS vendors are coming up and new products are released every day. The growing competition in SaaS sector and integration of SaaS applications with free and/or open-source tools on web (like Google Analytics, Socializing tools and OpenOffice) are making SaaS products increasingly cheap.
Software as a Service way of software delivery helps small and medium sized businesses in many ways. The primary advantage is their cost effectiveness offering quick ROI. There is not cost related to software purchase, installation, database management, system maintenance, in-house networking, etc. The only things a SaaS user must have are a Web browser and internet connection. SaaS users can access the software from any where in the world using any devise allowing internet browsing. There is virtually no cost related to system maintenance, to update software or to solve problems; only cost is monthly subscription fee calculated per user. This makes SaaS favorable for financial budgeting, as you can easily predict software costs once you estimate the number of software users.
Other advantages of SaaS products includes; the need of only computer operating and internet surfing knowledge, high degree of customization, higher mobility, integration with most advanced business applications, up-to-date tools and free software update by vendor, web-based interface which is easy to understand and configure, sophisticated analysis and reporting tools, real-time database updating and centralized remote database which is automatically backed up, tools for planning business strategies, increasing number of open-source products, and continues. But just like any other software application the level of benefit will depends upon the product company chooses and the way in which it is implemented.
Like any other type of products available, SaaS also has many limitations and drawbacks. It is not suitable for companies with increased number of employees, it offers less security to companys data, it requires too much to and fro movement of data across internet, it discards any internal network or database a company has already developed, and it is not for areas where there is not internet or slow internet.
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