Heightened competitive pressures and customer demand for more affordable alternatives to packaged software compel Independent Software Vendors (ISVs) to turn with greater frequency to Software-as-a-Service (SaaS). Reacting to forecasts that in the next 10 years at least 30% of new software will be delivered via the SaaS model, the ISVs are scrambling to find simple, cost-effective ways to provide functionality, maintenance and support over the Web.

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ASP, SaaS & On-Demand Software

We at ThinkLogic have a thorough understanding of the operational strategies and resources required to assist in delivering a competitive SasS product. And we can do it at a fraction of the cost and turnaround time needed to do it in-house.

“Do you have much experience building software variations?” Hard as it is to believe, the answer for many companies is “No.”

 In fact, a number of such companies have never built any of these software variations.  This is where we stand out. Not only have we engineered, built and hosted ASP, SaaS and on-demand software, but we have also participated in Microsoft’s SaaS On-Ramp programs, which enables us to launch your SaaS software at a lower cost.

The problem might appear baffling, but it is one that must be addressed if your goal is a scalable vehicle capable of delivering your software to users. We hope that the following summaries of the nature and goals of these types of software will be useful.

Application Software Provider (ASP) Software

Traditionally, these are client-server applications with a web-centric interface. These applications are hosted by a 3rd party to reduce the costs and overhead involved in paying for hardware needed to deliver the application to its users. There are no license fees to use the software since the application is developed for the customer. ASP applications are especially useful to companies that need a highly customized application capable of responding to quickly changing business rules. If, however, your software is intended to be delivered to many companies, a SaaS model is a better fit.

On-Demand Software

On-demand software resembles many of the ASP software designs, the key difference being that on-demand follows a "pay-as-you-go" subscription model.

Software as a Service (Saas)

This is the model most attractive to companies. Like ASP applications, SaaS is delivered through a web-centric interface to its users. The difference is that an ASP application is owned and hosted by a 3rd party provider, whereas the SaaS application is leased and maintained by the provider itself.

Companies using your SaaS application will benefit from a dramatic drop in costs. Small to medium-sized businesses prefer leasing SaaS applications because they are relieved of the hassle of researching, developing, maintaining and hosting their application.

But are the implications for you? The SaaS developer has to consider a number of issues in designing software that can be profitable. Here are some the factors that go into design:

• Multi-tenant architecture - The foundation of a mature SaaS application. Your application is used by many different tenants, with each tenant in turn having many users. During the session of the user, the application looks and follows workflow specific to the user's tenant. This feature of a SaaS application enables you to service more tenants on fewer servers.
• Data separation & service-level agreements (SLA) - Because customers now lease your software and your software runs on your servers, it's critical that your clients have the capacity to run their applications with its potentially sensitive data without the risk of sharing space with other clients. Careful planning is necessary to determine the right approach to satisfying your software's SLA.
• Security & authentication - Security is more important than other delivery models, so careful consideration must be given to user rights and credentials. A blend of symmetric and asymmetric key pair encryption should be used in order to ensure that data is protected at all times.
• Network scalability - Build up or build out? Before the first line of code is written, the best topography for running your software needs to be identified.  Software with suitable multi-tenant architecture enables other services, e.g.  load balancing, SSL accelerators and redundancy, virtually guaranteeing elimination of bottlenecks and providing 100% uptime to your customers.

To learn more about what we have done for our clients, or how your software can benefit from any of these delivery models, Contact Us and speak with a software architect.