Most businesses, big or small, require software to perform the various tasks needed during the process of conducting their business. Software that is needed by the business has to be bought, quite often at a high cost which is very inhibiting for most small businesses. This is where software as a service or SaaS came into being as a model in which the software required by the business is made available by vendors on a licensing basis and charges are made based on the usage of the product.
In this model, the software is available to concerned business on demand, generally over the Internet. SaaS applications are also available to businesses as an application that is available to all the computers on the network of the enterprise by installing the software directly onto the servers of that company. In this case, the application has the problem that the usage of these SaaS products is no longer available to an employee once he leaves the office unless some form of remote connectivity has been established.
The architecture and design of present SaaS applications ensures that many customers are able to avail the applications and use them from a common shared data model. SaaS software enables network-based access to commercial software. Activities for these applications are available from a central server set up by the developer of the software and do not have to be on the customer’s site. As the software is centralized, any updates or upgrades are immediately available to all users without the need for users to download any updates or patches. Such software is also easily integrated into any communication software that may be in use by a business. Pricing is generally done on a per user basis, and sometimes bandwidth used is monitored for billing of usage. Some developers charge for a minimum number of users and storage is also charged for separately. The basic advantage here is that a business only pays for what it needs.
The low initial cost of SaaS applications is very attractive to small businesses and there is no large outgo of capital to set up an application on the computers used by the businesses. SaaS applications are charged based on the subscription rates per computer and any additional charges for storage or bandwidth usage. So the business ends up paying for only the actual use by its employees. 
SaaS applications can be used on almost any device that can be connected to the Internet and is not dependent on the hardware quality or storage devices installed on each device. There is little to no learning curve involved especially where employees are already used to working on the Internet.
There is no need for the business to worry about upgrades and patches as the SaaS application provider would be doing these improvements on an almost daily basis and the upgrades would be available to all users at all times. So there is no downtime of computers frequently associated with such upgrades where the applications are installed on the computer.
Most SaaS applications are very easily integrated into any existing software with a business. They can also easily expand their capabilities to cater to any increased usage in an organization once the minimal hardware is in position.
The owner of a small business is easily able to log onto the SaaS applications from wherever he is and thus be in constant touch with the latest data available in his company’s storage. This also allows a small business to authorize its travelling representatives to use the IT knowledge of the company from wherever they are.
Another major benefit is that some SaaS products, such as Severa 3, allow you to create a free account for a limited number of users. This allows the business to fully investigate the product without any initial expenditure. In fact, some businesses may be able to get everything they need within these free accounts.
SaaS applications have found very wide usage among HR and project management professionals as they are easily able to access monitoring and other software that they need for the implementation of their own tasks.
Image Credit : SaaS Website