About SaaS - Software as a Service
I want to say one thing right away, SaaS is a specialized term, and if you start delving into it, it can be complex. It can induce not only boredom but also a certain reverential dread. But in reality, it's quite simple. To use a SaaS product, it's not necessary to understand the deep or even superficial meaning of this term.
If you're passionate about web technologies or are considering which type of products are best for you, which ones are most promising, etc., all of this can be interesting and useful.
There's a lot written about SaaS, and you can start learning about it, for example, with an article on Wikipedia. However, usually, all this information can be quite hard to digest. In the end, it might seem like you understand what it's about, but its relevance might remain unclear. And if you ask someone to explain what they just read, not everyone will be able to do so.
So, I'll try to simplify it as much as possible and look at the software-as-a-service model as a service on some basic examples.
Often, SaaS is considered as a business model, and it is often erroneously equated with renting, which, although it shares some commonalities, has a different core. Typically, what's interesting is the technological aspect of the model, rather than the payment structure and period.
When we use software via web rather than installing it on our own, we generally become consumers of SaaS at that moment. The simplest and most widely used SaaS service is email services like Gmail.
To set up email from scratch, you would need to:
- Set up a server.
- Install specialized software on it, like a mail transfer agent (e.g., Postfix), configure everything, and maintain it.
- Install and configure an email client, such as The Bat or Thunderbird, on your computer.
- You'd need to monitor and ensure that everything continues to work, avoid being blacklisted by other mail servers, and deal with spam, and so on.
In many organizations, email still works this way today, and it is maintained by an in-house sysadmin or even a team of specialists, depending on the organization's size and infrastructure.
End-users and the general public don't deal with such complexities. They don't use their provider's email, although nearly everyone used to do so almost 20 years ago, and they retrieved emails via POP3. Web interfaces for email were in their infancy. Today, the vast majority use web-based email. Even tech-savvy individuals often switch to web interfaces from desktop email clients. This doesn't mean that everyone will eventually switch to this email consumption model, as specific tasks and habits persist, but for most people, this is the most convenient and practical method. Here, everything plays a role: reliability, simplicity, and even security. Many individuals and companies are transitioning to such solutions, including corporations. Specialized corporate email solutions based on a service are offered by Google, Yahoo, and others.
Email is, for the most part, the simplest and most widespread example. If we consider CRM, ERP systems, or website builders, they aren't needed by everyone. They have a narrower consumer base. However, many software products are available as services. They often provide benefits to their users, typically in terms of ease of use, reduced maintenance needs, cost-effectiveness, and more. Other advantages depend primarily on the specific field, sometimes involving higher security levels, seamless synchronization, and accessible multi-user collaboration, thanks to cloud data storage.
To avoid getting lost in general words and characteristics, I suggest looking at examples. Among the most common use cases of SaaS solutions, you can find project management systems, online organizers, and document management systems. They are all readily available and many people already use them without contemplating the ideology of such services and the daunting smart abbreviations.
As I mentioned, there's no need to look far for examples. Working with documents? Sure, there's the popular Google Docs, which allows you to forgo Word and Excel and gain various advantages, primarily related to collaborative document editing.
There are plenty of online organizers and tools for organizing work and managing to-do lists.
A third (less obvious) example is online gaming. While they're not commonly classified as SaaS solutions, they are now accessible as services with the same ideology. Most often, these are MMORPGs. Just as a reminder, games are also software, and, for example, Microsoft classifies Xbox Live as a SaaS product.
Why all these examples? To demonstrate that software presented as a service has been around for a long time. Both the market and we ourselves use SaaS much more often than we realize. The convenience, simplicity, cost-effectiveness, and other SaaS benefits win the hearts of consumers without explaining the complex inner workings and philosophy of the model.
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