Software as a Service

I recently did a Web 3.0 presentation in work, and I thought it would be fitting to feed back some of my learnings here. So today I'm going to quickly talk about Software as a Service (SaaS). As technological development and penetration increases, both through hardware, software and transmission channel, there will be an inevitable shift to 3.0, or Semantic, utilisation of the internet.

Software as a service (SaaS) first appeared in mid 2000 in reference to a new business model that saw software applications being accessed over the Internet, as opposed to being purchased and run locally. This is perhaps most obvious with Digital advertising software such as metric analysis and adserving. With SaaS, a business pays a usage fee to access software over the Internet, with no installation, no upgrade costs and no maintenance or troubleshooting. The advantage is that all users are always using the same, most up to date, version of software and as their initial expense is limited to a months licence fee, it is possible for businesses to access the latest business applications more easily.

According to Wikipedia, “many types of software are well suited to the SaaS model, where customers may have little interest or capability in software deployment, but do have substantial computing needs”. SaaS has gained a foothold in applications like CRM, HR, accounting and email. It is also ideally suited to digital advertising analysis.