SaaS: Software as a Service
SaaS stands for Software as a Service is a business model that provides a customer with a certain feature or functionality “out-of-the-box” or with minimal effort through an API interface. SaaS services utilize the internet to deliver their applications to the customer, so mostly you will be accessing these applications through your web browser.
These types of applications can be great because you can simply access whatever feature you need without the hassle of having to deal with technical issues, servers, storage, etc… Those issues are dealt with by the vendor.
Advantages of using SaaS
The advantages of these types of services are mainly related to costs: time, money, or both. With SaaS you are paying for an already established system so you don’t need to build that service yourself and it is available online so there is no need for installing and upgrading software on your office machines. That time that would spend on these issues can now be spent on better things for your business.
Disadvantages of using SaaS
As you deal with third-party software provided by a vendor, you will notice that customization and integration can be very limited, these services are made to serve “everyone” and not everyone wants the same things so some users might end up with the short end of the stick. Also, the most desirable features may be locked behind a “big” paywall.
If the SaaS service you are using stores large volumes of data, you might be dealing with liability because now, not only you are dealing with the security of your company, you are also dependent on the security measures implemented by the vendor to safeguard your sensitive data. Also if you want to change from one service to another, the data that was stored may not be portable so you will have to spend resources in engineering a solution in-house to transfer your data to the new service.
Possible downtimes and performance issues must be accounted for. Just as your solutions can have the occasional hiccup, so does your vendor’s solutions. There are maintenance, cyber-attacks, and other network issues that may affect the availability of the services.
Should I use SaaS?
As with everything in life, it depends. If you are a small company or a startup and want to get your new shiny idea up and running quickly, you might consider SaaS for some parts of your solution. For example, you can start with Zendesk to deal with customer support/ticketing but perhaps down the line, you want to build your own in-house solution.
Perhaps if you are dealing with extremely sensitive data and extremely high availability, like a banking application. You might be better off without SaaS.
Perhaps some SaaS will always be welcome, especially those that are not intrinsic to the solution you are creating. For example, Microsoft Office 365 is considered a SaaS and most likely you will be needing a tool to create documentation and collaborate with your co-workers.
Conclusion
SaaS solutions are great to get an idea started and to handle the more “not-critical mission” parts of your solution but those choices may have a price because each time you decide to use a SaaS solutions to deal with a particular feature, that is a feature that now lost control of.
