Why Use SaaS
In the development of its On-Demand Help-Desk and Asset Management product suite, Smartpath recognised the growing demand for its solution to be delivered as a service and set about ensuring its software and infrastructure compatibility for optimum performance.
Sometimes termed SaaS (Software-as-a-Service), demand is being driven by a number of factors primarily, the ability to reduce upfront software payments and total cost of ownership (TCO).
In addition, there is a move away from traditional client/server computing models to more flexible distributed architectures and a recognition of the 'true cost' of supporting internally managed applications with ever changing technologies.
Businesses have a growing need to access applications 24/7 and support applications remotely. These requirements along with the trend towards flexible, robust and secure application infrastructure that can be cost and technologically prohibitive are ensuring that on-demand and SaaS application solutions are here to stay.
The Benefits of Smartpath's On-Demand Products
The benefits of on-demand Help-Desk, Asset and Maintenance Management software products are many for organisations that are considering moving to a subscription model for some or all of its applications. Just some of the benefits include:
- Immediate access to a valuable business tool
- Removing the need for organizations to outlay a significant capital lump sum cost for an Enterprise-wide application
- Reducing the cost of, and dependency on skilled resources to maintain and support applications
- Ability to go Global and quickly make the application available to an overseas branch office and where support capabilities may be limited
- Speed of market entry allowing customers to quickly ramp up their business operations as market opportunities present themselves; and Provision of immediate scalability.
Industry Recognised Benefits of the SaaS Model
The benefits of SaaS solutions can be significant if the application suits your organisation. SaaS is not the right business model for everyone.
A few of the benefits of SaaS are listed below:
- No client/server software installation or maintenance
- Shorter Deployment Time - minutes as opposed to a phased implementation that can take months
- Global Availability - while the technology exists to make on-premise software available outside of your premises, SaaS applciations are available from anywhere on the internet natively.
- Service Level Agreement (SLA) Adherence - reported bugs can be fixed minus any rollout overhead. Patch and application changes are deployed quickly and effeciently because the infrastructure is owned by the vendor.
- Constant, Smaller, Upgrades - when you use a SaaS application, it is in the best interest of the vendor to keep you happy and they can do so by constantly improving the application experience. With SaaS this can come in the form of consistent miniscule changes that add up over time instead of monster patch and upgrades that cost you time and money to implement.
- Ease Your Internal IT Pains - Most of the last several points here highlight that SaaS offloads a great deal of IT pains incurred by software consumers in the traditional client/server model. This leaves IT personnel to focus on improving the day-to-day technical operations of your company instead of being called upon to troubleshoot 3rd party software or maintain aging infrastructure. This leads to…
- Redistribute IT Budget - By outsourcing software functionality to a provider, your organization will realize cost savings in infrastructure requirements and IT personnel knowledge requirements. This allows the enterprise to focus on core competencies. It also means that the cost savings from using SaaS applications can go to the bottom line, or reallocated to boost productivity through other services.
