Software as a Service
SERVICED FROM ANYWHERE
The most prevalent and fastest growing market within cloud computing is Software as a Service or SaaS (typically pronounced ’sass’). It centers on a few core applications that are delivered over the Internet. The emergence of SaaS has enabled enterprises and organisations to get new applications up and running quickly and cheaply – saving re-sources for mission-critical tasks.
In this model of cloud computing, the provider licenses an application to customers for use as a service on demand, supplies the hardware infrastructure, the software product and interacts with the user through a front-end portal.
SaaS software vendors may host the application on their own web servers or download the application to a consumer’s device, disabling it after use or after the on-demand contract expires. The on-demand function may be handled internally to share licenses within a firm or by a third-party application service provider sharing licenses between firms.
SaaS is a very broad market. Services can be anything from Web-based email to inventory control and database processing. Because the service provider hosts both the application and the data, the end user is free to use the service from anywhere.
CLOUD VS. SAAS
The major differences between Cloud computing and SaaS are:
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PARAMETERS
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CLOUD
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SAAS
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Delivery
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- Delivers computing as a utility.
- A true cloud computing environ-ment which takes advantage of the latest technologies such as virtual-isation to maximise resource util-isation.
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- Delivers an application as a utility.
- SaaS application can be delivered from a range of models from ven-dor’s own data centre or to a third party hosting vendor.
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Provisioned as
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- Application delivery model.
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Scalable
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- It is a style of computing where scalable IT-related capabilities are provided “as a service” using in-ternet technologies to multiple external customers.
- “Massively scalable”.
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- SaaS is software that is owned, delivered and managed remotely by one or more providers. It also allows a sharing of applications processing and storage resources in a one-to-many environment, on a pay-for-use basis, or as a subs-cription.
- Below the “massively scalable” benchmark.
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Applications
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- Not all cloud applications are SaaS applications.
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- All SaaS applications are in the cloud. Cloud strictly provides the computing power to run those ap-plications regardless of the type.
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Multi-Tenant
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- Multi-tenancy enables sharing of resources and costs across larger pool of users: allowing centralisa-tion, peak-load capacity, utilisation and efficiency.
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- Application delivery typically closer to a one-to-many model (single in-stance, multi-tenant architecture).
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Restrictions
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- Cloud computing is next gener-ation of software as a service, in which the complete software en-vironment is licensed as a subs-cription from a software vendor and low-cost, secure, and depen-dable IT hardware infrastructure is rented from utility computing provider on demand.
- Customer has complete control over its own secure and private IT environment at a much lower cost without the hassle of pro-curing and managing its own data centre. It can quickly scale IT re-sources up or down as computing needs change. Customer has com-plete freedom to customise the solution as it sees fits and com-plete control over upgrade cycles and all aspects of its IT environ-ment.
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- Traditionally, SaaS offerings inher-ently restrict customer’s ability to customise solutions, requires co-mingling of sensitive data from var-ious customers and force all cus-tomers to comply with upgrades, downtime schedules etc.
- Customers required to sacrifice freedom and control for the con-venience of a hosted SaaS model.
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The page you have just read above and the content it contains was created and published in real time on this website using a laptop relying on a SaaS application hosted on a remote server containing a content management system with a WYSIWYG editor. It was written aboard a commercial flight cruising at an altitude of about 38,000 feet on a flight path approximately 6,700 kilometers away heading towards Digital Summit’s office premises in Auckland. It is but just an example of the versatility and convenience that a SaaS solution is able to deliver anywhere, anytime.
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