The most common example of a successful professional SaaS application is the SalesForceCustomer Relationship Manager (CRM). SalesForcehas won numerous awards and their user base hasgrown from 5,000 to 50,000 clients (includingChyron) since 2001 and is on an exponential growth path. First of all, Salesforce is a well designedapplication that provides real benefits to their customers. SaaS will not make a bad application better. But the SaaS model proved to be a compellingadvantage for SalesForce in the CRM market, for many of the reasons I will now describe.
WHAT ARE THE ADVANTAGES OF SAAS?
SaaS has many benefits for both the vendor and theclient over traditional software models. SaaS savesthe client money because rather than having a largeupfront fee like traditional purchased software, SaaSis usually sold on a subscription model. You “pay asyou go” with a monthly or yearly fee per seat or per service. That means better return on investment sincethe investment is small. SaaS applications are usuallyvery scalable and you pay for services as you needthem. It is easy to add or remove users as your needschange so you don’t need to pay up front for your eventual long term needs.The client also benefits from not needing to purchaseand maintain the IT hardware to run the application.You do not need to tie up engineering and ITresources maintaining the software, backing up data,installing updates, or debugging problems when theyarise. Your staff can focus on producing goodcontent and not maintaining their software tools.SaaS saves you time, because in many cases a SaaSapplication can be up and running almostimmediately. You just log on. You do not need to plan ahead to purchase and install hardware. You donot need to wait for the vendor to come on-site tocommission the system. Software updates and bugresolutions can happen immediately andtransparently, you don’t need to schedule times for the vendor to come and install updates.With SaaS, the vendor is providing more than just thesoftware application and a hardware platform, theyare providing a 24 by 7 service and are responsiblefor ensuring that it works smoothly. This eliminatesfinger pointing, misunderstanding and delays. Thevendor is constantly on-site and monitoring usage for problems. They likely have numerous clients and arelearning how to improve the product through avariety of user experiences.SaaS simplifies the vendor’s job by eliminating theneed to distribute software and ensuring it is properlyinstalled on the client’s hardware. Updates areinstalled immediately and there are never any“versioning” problems. Customer service costs arekept to a minimum because service calls are notneeded. The vendor maintains physical control of thesoftware at all times.The SaaS ‘community’ benefits from economies of scale and can afford to provide a much higher levelof redundancy and security in their infrastructure thancould the individual client at a given cost.In today’s mobile environment, there arecollaboration benefits to a hosted SaaS applicationoffering centralized data storage with ubiquitous webaccess. Before Chyron adopted the SalesForce CRM,each salesperson had their own contact databasewhich they would occasionally update. They didn’talways have access to their own database when theywere on the road. Customer Service and Sales haddifferent contact info and there was little sharing of information between them. SalesForce unified all thecontact and customer information into a singledatabase that is remotely available to everyone,whether they are in their office, at home or on theroad. It is instantly updated across the board. Newcontact information can be entered once andeveryone has it. For instance, a record of a serviceissue is immediately available to the salesperson sothat they can follow up.
WHAT ARE THE CONCERNS ABOUT SAAS?
Broadcasters are constantly adopting newtechnologies, and with every change the benefitshave to be weighed against the risks. What are therisks associated with the SaaS solution? And, moreimportantly, how do they compare to the risks of hosting the application yourself?The most common concerns about SaaS solutions areavailability and security. How do I know if theapplication will be available when I need it? Will it be more or less available than if I host it myself andat what cost? As was described in the previoussection, it is usually the case that the SaaS vendor’sinfrastructure can take advantage of economies of scale to build a more reliable and fault tolerantsystem then you could afford to have in-house. Andif there are problems in the application, the vendor’sstaff is available to diagnose and fix the problemimmediately, in many cases even before you knowyou had a problem.
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