Five Killer Trends that Would Redefine Business Apps

Continued from page: 2

Thursday, January 03, 2008

Business Apps Follow the SaaS Model

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Traditionally, enterprises have been purchasing or developing their own software applications, running them on their infrastructure and performing the necessary tasks of maintaining the application and doing necessary upgrades for it. But now this traditional approach has been changed. Enterprises are accepting business models such as Software-as-a-Service (SaaS), whereby they need not buy and install expensive application packages. They rather access and use the remotely hosted applications.

SaaS isn't a new concept. It's just an improved version of application hosting, previously known as Application Service Providers (ASP) which came with a bang a few years ago, but left without a sound. The SaaS business model, like its predecessor ASP, is based on software distribution model where a software vendor or service provider hosts the business application software and makes it available to its customers over a network. The network in case of SaaS is Internet. One of the major obstacles that had been removed from the path for SaaS is the availability of bandwidth to the masses and that too at a lower price.

The availability of bandwidth has favored the SaaS movement. Today, one can avail everything from online Office suites to Web OSes, and enterprise business applications such as ERP and CRM using the SaaS model.

How SaaS apps benefit enterprises
SaaS allows enterprises to access functionalities of software applications at a lower cost with no investments, in either software or hardware. The enterprises can adopt the SaaS-based business applications to cut down on capital investment that would have been incurred while setting up those applications to run from their own premises.

With SaaS, the enterprises need not bother about costs of licensing and purchasing application packages. Since the SaaS application vendor takes up the task of setting up the necessary infrastructure that will be needed to host the application the enterprises save this capital investment which can be diverted toward operations.

With SaaS-based applications, the complexities involved with the installation and implementation of the application and corresponding hardware requirements, IT manpower for maintaining such applications, maintenance hassles, and down-time, are worries of past for an enterprise. This way an enterprise can save cost that would have otherwise been incurred toward application's licensing, implementation, and its training. The only thing that an enterprise user now requires is to access these SaaS-based business apps in an Internet connection and a Web browser.

For an enterprise, the benefits of adopting SaaS-based business applications is not just cost savings, SaaS apps also leverage mobility to their employees. The pervasive Internet connectivity and the penetration of notebooks and mobile devices have made it possible for an employee to work from home or even while traveling.

A SaaS-based business app allows employees to access their business applications from a Web browser anywhere and anytime. Also as the business apps are already installed, they just need to be configured as per the client's requirement. This results in faster deployment of the application which has also termed the SaaS applications as 'Instant-On' applications. Thus an enterprise which has opened up a new branch office in another city can extend the user subscription from the SaaS vendor and get the business applications up and running for the new office in no time.

Collaboration and resource sharing have been two aspects that Web 2.0 has emphasized upon. These days SaaS vendors are following the roadmap of Web 2.0 whereby their applications would be interactive and user-friendly along with the facility for collaboration and resource sharing among the users of the application. Keeping this in perspective the new-age SaaS applications are not merely a standalone business functionality solution, but a solution that provides full e-business functionality by integrating business applications like CRM, workflow, SCM along with services like web-mail, chat/IM, and online support.

With such an application an online business environment can be achieved whereby users can interact among themselves and also share information while being able to access business applications (like CRM, SCM) that they use for their work. These SaaS applications facilitate all these services from within a Web browser. The enterprises just have to subscribe to the service; they can even customize the services offered by SaaS vendor to fit their requirements.

Many enterprise business app providers have also jumped upon the SaaS bandwagon by looking at the growth prospective. The likes of Microsoft and Oracle have already started their SaaS initiative products and services. Microsoft this year announced their own SaaS initiative plans by providing hosted services of Microsoft Exchange server and SharePoint software. Doing this will allow organizations to use the SharePoint's collaborative applications and Exchange Server's mail functionalities while saving on the cost of infrastructure needed to deploy these applications and also on their licensing and maintenance costs.

Thanks to one of the leading SaaS-based CRM vendor 'SalesForce.com;' now an enterprise can implement CRM application for its offices with just a few clicks and employees can access it over the Internet using a Web browser. Similarly, WorkACE is a Web 2.0 based SaaS solution that offers a whole online business environment.

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