The growing demand for disruptive applications and platforms across varied industries has reinforced the need for software organizations to deliver products with improved speed-to-market but at a reduced cost without compromising on quality. There is also an increasing customer demand for products that can seamlessly integrate across multiple systems.
SaaS is no longer a nice-to-have, but a business necessity. The Covid-19 pandemic has prompted organizations to fast-track their decisions to shun the legacy IT infrastructure that has inherent challenges and shift to the cloud because it helps organizations achieve their larger objective of enhancing operational efficiency and delivering an elevated customer experience. The growth story of the SaaS market is poised to get only bigger in the years to come. According to a Gartner report, spending on SaaS cloud services is predicted to reach $145.3 billion by 2022. Further, if Gartner’s findings are anything to go by, SaaS is set to be the largest market segment over other cloud service models such as Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) and Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) that are predicted to touch $106.8 billion and $71.5 billion by 2022.
Our Customer Experience
At Innover, we are focused on consistently delivering engineering excellence to our customers. We solve customer business problems day in and day out. We helped a technology company by seamlessly building teams with their clients and delivering exceptional software development and support.
We have forged long-lasting relationships with other customers as well. Our focus has been not just to solve customer problems but also to go beyond the scope of the task and suggest improvements. Our engagements have helped our customers accelerate business growth.
Key Takeaways of SaaS
Low Upfront Cost
A key reason why organizations prefer SaaS over traditional on-premises solutions is its low upfront cost. This cost factor has been instrumental in the rapid shift from on-premises to SaaS. The subscription model of SaaS works well for organizations and significantly reduces the time they would have otherwise spent on customization and implementation. It also eliminates the need to shell out a big software license fee as is the case with on-premises solutions.
Scalability
SaaS provides organizations with enhanced scalability – it also drives seamless integration across multiple systems. SaaS is a huge benefit for organizations that are embarking on an expansion journey (acquiring new companies, product lines/facilities, etc), as they can easily adjust and scale to meet their business needs without having to worry about improving their hardware. The SaaS model is also advantageous for organizations, whose volume production is cyclical in nature. SaaS nips any technical issues in the bud in case of any increased software usage as that responsibility lies with the SaaS vendor.
Faster Deployment
SaaS can be deployed at a much faster pace as there is little to no hardware involved, unlike an on-premises solution. It can be deployed across multiple regions, subsidiaries, and divisions – SaaS helps organizations avoid costs associated with those rollouts. Since these solutions do not require additional hardware, it effectively means that organizations do not have to waste time in procuring & installing IT infrastructure and VPN access across multiple sites.
Ease of Accessibility
Another advantage of SaaS is its accessibility via the internet – it can be accessed anytime, anywhere, and across any platform. There’s no need for multiple builds of the same software for functionality across platforms, which effectively means there is no learning curve for cross-platform users.
Hassle-Free Software Upgrades
Software upgrades can be frustrating for organizations in an on-premises setup. Purchasing upgrades and new software versions to access new features and services can be a costly exercise. But with SaaS organizations do not have any such concerns as software upgrades are taken care of by SaaS vendors. Of course, the cost of those services is typically included in the monthly subscription fee but in most cases, these subscription fees are far lesser than frequent full-package upgrades.
No Maintenance Headache
An exciting feature of SaaS solutions that gets organizations excited is that there is no maintenance burden. Even if there are downtimes they would have a low impact because SaaS vendors have access to a much larger workforce than what most companies have access to, which can restore any failure on track in very little time. This is in stark contrast to an on-premises solution, wherein the IT team has to invest a lot of time and money to maintain an on-premises system and administer regular check-ups to avoid unnecessary downtime and ensure the system is up and running when you need it.
Future SaaS Road
The Covid-19 pandemic may have left a trail of destruction all around but it has accelerated the adoption of cloud-based technologies – among all cloud service models Software-as-a-service (SaaS) is set to gain prominence in the times to come as organizations accord high priority to their digital transformation initiatives. The increasing focus among organizations on scalability, ease of accessibility, and cost reduction will ensure that SaaS remains the most preferred road over traditional on-premises solutions. Yes, SaaS is set for the long haul!
