SaaS (Software as a Service) – refers to a model where a software provider provides an application to customer for use as a service, whenever wanted. Subscription to the service includes licensing, subscription, etc.

Since the application is developed, hosted and maintained by the provider, the customer does not bear the direct cost of hosting and maintenance. Also, since the service is available over the internet, it makes it easy for access from different locations. The deployment and time to profit is also reduced for smaller companies.

SaaS is a good option for small, non-complex companies. These processes allow these small companies or startups to focus on the more complex business and personal processes rather than the routine.

However, there are a number of cases where this model would not work either for the provider or the customer.

Data speeds: The data transfer happens over the internet and not over the ethernet speeds that most people are used to. This is not helpful for cases where you need to use the service frequently and for time critical processes.

Data security: This is a specific concern for all customers since it is their data (and potentially thousands of their customers’ data) that is present at the servers of some third-party. In addition, the data transfer happens over the internet. There are significant gains being made in this area, however, with the advances in technology, the risk still remains high.

Stability: The provider might go bust. What should a customer do if their service provider closes shop? How does he go about retrieving his data? What should a provider do when a customer goes missing? This impacts his revenue stream.

Customization: This is not recommended for applications or services that require a high degree of customization. This is true in cases of applications such as manufacturing, business intelligence or ERP, any applications that are at the code of a company’s business practices and provide the differentiation from the market. If a customer needs to pay for the customization, he might as well get a traditional enterprise application build for himself. If the provider pays for this, it might not turn out to be cost effective for him.

Integration: If my software needs to integrate with other software, SaaS proves to be a difficult model to work with. Since parts of my solutions are not with me, the customer cannot change or ask for changes easily. Since the product (under the SaaS model) is a complex one being used by multiple customers; the provider cannot change it easily either.

Active (in-process) applications: SaaS works well when a user needs to make a few disconnected calls to the service to send or receive data. If he needs the application to be online (where a long connection is needed to make continuous data entry), the remote nature of the service and the data access over the internet makes this model prohibitive.

So where does this leave us now?

I believe the answer lies somewhere in the future – Cloud Computing and thin clients.

Cloud computing in general provides a useful computing power over the internet. Could computing generally encapsulate these three items– infrastructure as a service, platform as a service and software as a service. It is the first two parts that will help solve the issues with the third part.

Thin clients are gaining more traction, especially in the mobile world, as the future of application or software development. The idea is to have a thin client that knows how to connect to the server and display the data or results. This relies more on the use of services (custom enterprise applications or third-party services) over the internet.

Some of the earlier mentioned issues might still be around with the new development and delivery models, but with the increase in the power of the internet and the computer itself, we will soon look at a different list of pros and cons.

Ravi Yadavalli Architecture & Design