SaaS compels the midmarket - Advantages of on-demand model make it a good fit for CRM, PLM, enterprise solutions

摘要

A significant number of manufacturers - particularly in the small and midsize market - are adopting applications in the soft-ware-as-a service (SaaS) - or on-demand - model. The big question surrounding this phenomenon is: What took so long? After all, the SaaS model offers high levels of uptime and security, in addition to being easier and cheaper to install, use, and upgrade than traditional on-premises applications. "If a company is considered small or midsize, the only way to get world-class applications was to buy them -which those companies couldn't afford to do," says "M.R." Rangaswami, cofounder of San Francisco-based venture capital firm Sand Hill Group. "SaaS offers a big competitive advantage because it enables businesses to use great applications without the cost of on-premise solutions." The savings continue because unlike other hosted models, SaaS employs a multi-tenant architecture, which offers economies of scale because all users subscribing to that application actually use a single instance of the application housed at a central location, Rangaswami explains. Because they only need to maintain one version of the system, there is a cost savings for the provider, which can then pass that savings on to customers.