SaaS stands for Software As A Service and is gaining momentum in the digital signage industry.It is an application hosted on a remote server and accessed through the Internet.
A simple and concrete example of SaaS are the “free” email (also called web-based email) systems offered on the Internet such as Microsoft Hotmail, G-mail and Yahoo Mail. Each program meets the basic criteria of an SaaS application: a vendor (Microsoft, Google or Yahoo) hosts all of the programs, logic and data in a central location and provides end users access to this data and the software which is run and used over the world-wide web.
The main benefits of using Digital Signage SaaS are :
- Lower Costs. The user need not pay a single (usually large) licensing fee. He only needs to pay recurring subscription fees.
- Smaller Storage Requirements. The user need not store software or data stored on his computer so he doesn’t need large data storage facilities. There is also the convenience of not needing to constantly backup data - storage is the responsibility of the SaaS provider.
- Fewer Personnel. SaaS reduces the need for specially trained IT personnel to handle maintenance, monitoring and software updates. The SaaS vendor will provide a dedicated team to handle these tasks.
How Secure is SaaS?
Perhaps the biggest challenge facing SaaS deals with security. While true in many cases, SaaS CRM providers generally offer an extremely robust set of data security measures that are often more extensive than what a customer could guarantee if the application was located on-premise. These include items such as data encryption, user authentication, perimeter defense and operating system and database security, among many others.
8 Trends in Software as a Service Platforms
- SaaS is just part of the web mega-trend
- Mainstream opinion says “Yes” to SaaS
- Software vendors stampede into SaaS
- All is being virtualized
- Explosion of Web APIs
- Economic factors favor SaaS
- Enterprise and SMB IT embraces SaaS
- SaaS platforms proliferate (PaaS)
