The Internet is growing at a rapid rate and Internet penetration levels in some third world countries has also reached considerable numbers. This growth and the busy lifestyle of most people led to the growth of SAAS, which stands for Software as a Service. The software and the user data are hosted centrally in the Internet and users can access the data and use the software through a browser. With close to 13 billion SAAS products sold worldwide it is safe to say that this software model is widely accepted.
There are many reasons why people prefer SAAS applications over traditional desktop software. The first thing is the price. With the advancement of technologies cost of data storage has gone down considerably. This include hardware prices, maintenance cost and rental costs. Because of this reason these web based applications can deliver there software for very low prices. A great example for this is Microsoft Visio. The personal license cost hundreds of dollars and corporate licenses cost thousands. But a similar online drawing tool like Creately (creately.com) only costs $5 per month and it has many more benefits as well.
The other great thing SAAS offered is the anywhere access ability. The business environment is changing now and many people do part of their work from home. Even companies are more open to people working form home and some countries legally allow this for families with children. Because people are working from multiple locations the ability to access software and data from anywhere became very important, further fueling the growth of SAAS.
With companies looking to outsource some of their operations and also because of the distributed locations of offices, online collaboration is another thing that became very important. Although some traditional software support this through revision saving etc, it is nowhere near the real time collaboration supported by SAAS applications.
As the Internet grows further, SAAS will expand and traditional desktop software will surely fade. Smart companies are already building for the future and moving to cloud based applications, and the ones who adapt to the change will survive.
I manage my own blog network and does SEO consulting mainly for commercial websites in Sri Lanka. I’m very interested in social media and always trying out new things to see which perform better. While not doing stuff on the Internet I like to travel, read a book and try out various new dishes.