It's been a long time since the model of Software As A Service (SaaS) hit the scene and you'll hear many split opinions on it based on business philosophy, personal experience of successes/failures. When looking at this subject you need a particular pair of lenses for it to make sense. I'm including a basic guideline of when Unleashed Technologies, LLC thinks software as a service makes sense and when it doesn't. As an added value I wanted to include items to watch out for and steps to take when selecting a vendor.

As a web service firm we support the SaaS model with our the Marketing Command Center and we support client owned deployments of Drupal, DotNetNuke, Magento, and Wordpress for websites. So without further adieu here is how Unleashed Technologies, LLC helps clients make the right decisions:

When SaaS is a good idea:

• You're business needs a fit what would be considered normal activities or process. Functionality isn't particularly specialized for your business to generate a return on investment.
• You're working with a limited budget but want to get the highest level of functionality possible for a reasonable price point.
• You like getting new enhancements and paid for options that can be added on for lower price points then developing it yourself.
• You don't want to pay for the infrastructure to reliably serve up your application (servers, licensing, IT staff, etc).
• You enjoy knowing that your application is being managed for the licensing fee you maintain in terms of security exploits, data back-ups, and more.

When SaaS isn't a good idea:

• The functionality, system integration, or business presentation/processes you have are very unique requiring special programming work, consulting. or a highly customized deployment from a technology perspective.
• You're company policy is that you must own all source code to your software or alternatively must be hosted on premise.
• You're financially inconsistent or don't pay regular subscription fees in a timely manner. Applications or tools available in the cloud will be disabled on you for inconsistent payments. I'm not referring to being a bad bill payer but this model can hurt businesses that may have months of large receivables and other months that have close to none at all.

What to watch out for:

• Read the Terms and Conditions, make sure you understand them. This is important as screaming demands at a SaaS provider will not get you very far. Because of a hosted or closed source model don't think that if you decide not to pay your bill or want to move they'll give you the software, they won't. Which leads me to my next point...
• Test drive or at least get a demo of what your signing up for. Make sure it's what you expect and don't be afraid to take a longer interview process to get your questions answered. This is especially true for SaaS products that may cost thousands of dollars a month for the level of features, user accounts, or support that you want. This is much less of a concern for small to mid-sized businesses working with low cost SaaS solutions.
• People that promise you lots of personalized configuration changes or functionality that doesn't exist within the system for no extra cost. This is VERY fishy and usually means that it's not built on a scalable core. It's really just a custom deployment they're doing for you. This isn't always the case, sometimes the model is that the core is meant to be separate per client and the licensing fee covers a certain amount of consulting/custom work... this is VERY rare.

Consider this a basic checklist in helping to make the best decision for your company. If your a small to mid sized business, SaaS it's an unbelievably powerful option that will help you get ahead of your competitors or compete with larger companies that operate in your space. In terms of commercial websites, e-mail platforms, customer relationship management systems, and statistical tracking you'll get very powerful tools for a low cost of entry.

If you want to learn more about Software As A Service our team is happy to help you with any questions you may have. We can be reached at sales@unleashed-technologies.com or call into our offices and talk to an account manager; 410-864-8980.