Software as a Service

A business model where the software company provides maintenance, daily technical operation, and support for the software provided to their client. The idea is to eliminate the cost and hassle of technical operation and maintenance for softwares incurred by enterprises. Because the applications are written as net-native applications, there is less network-related performance issues. SaaS may be viewed as a portion of business process outsourcing (BPO). The rise of SaaS is changing the way enterprises pay for and use enterprise software solutions.

The key characteristics of SaaS software, according to IDC, include:

network-based access to, and management of, commercially available (i.e., not custom) software

activities that are managed from central locations rather than at each customer's site, enabling customers to access applications remotely via the Web

application delivery that typically is closer to a one-to-many model (single instance, multi-tenant architecture) than to a one-to-one model, including architecture, pricing, partnering, and management characteristics.

Additional Resources:

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