Software as a Service: The Future of Technology Arguably one of the most important inventions of the twentieth century, the Internet has revolutionized the way we live. From communicating with friends to transacting business, shopping and paying bills, the Internet impacts almost every aspect of our lives. Yet the benefits of this massive shift are still being realized in the field of business software applications as the technology behind them evolves. Client servers vs. remote computing Put at its simplest, business software applications have at least two "tiers" - the client tier (the part that the end user sees), and the rest of the system, which consists of the hardware and software that supports it and makes it work. Until relatively recently, users have had to pay for and support both tiers, by housing and maintaining the "back end" of the system in order to use the front end. Intuitively this makes as little sense as buying a whole switchboard and miles of telephone wires just to be able to make a phone call. Not only would you have all the expense of the equipment, you would also have to pay for an in-house telecommunications specialist. Fortunately for businesses, especially the smaller and mid-sized ones, technology has now developed an alternative - remote computing. Remote computing, also sometimes known as "software as a service" (SaaS), is offered with the idea of providing a service without making the end user pay all the associated costs. To use the telephone analogy again, with this model, hundreds of thousands of customers can have a telephone service cheaply and the telephone company manages all of the hardware apart from the phone on your desk.

What are the benefits of SaaS? First, it is important to note that as with any other product or service, some remote computing models are superior to others. The basic concept of SaaS has a number of advantages over the client-server model, but before you invest in a SaaS application for your business, it is worth checking how many of the bonus criteria your potential provider meets -ý these really indicate dependable and good-quality systems. 1. Less "down time" Server faults are inevitable, whether you are using a client server or a remote server. The difference is the effect this will have upon your ability to use the application. With a client server model, server faults will cause "down time", when the application can't be accessed. With software as a service from a reliable application service provider, you can use the application as normal with minimal down time. This feature is called fault tolerance and it occurs because every component of the back end of the system has another component that can perform the same function if necessary. With a client server model, this kind of functionality is impractical for cost reasons. Ask your SaaS provider: if the system can identify and replace the faulty component automatically. This level of sophistication means that there is no delay between a fault occurring and normal operation being restored, so no down time will be experienced by the user at all.

2. Better disaster management

One of the greatest advantages of SaaS is that in the event of a disaster befalling your office, your data is safe. No foolishly-placed cup of coffee, fire or tornado will cause you to lose your data,. By contrast, if you have your data on a server in your office you are at the mercy of any disaster that impacts your server. . Ask your SaaS provider: if they have replicated computing centers at geographically distributed locations. This means that even if a disaster impacts the computer center where your data is held, nothing is lost. 3. Access from anywhere Unlike client server models, remote computing allows users to access the application from anywhere with an Internet connection. Whether you are at the office, at home or on the road, you can access your data and get your work done. Client server models generally restrict access to particular workstations that are connected to the network on location. Ask your SaaS provider: what provisions they make for PDAs. Being able to access the application from your handheld device can be very convenient!

Internet-based versus browser-based software. A common misconception is that the Internet and the World Wide Web are interchangeable terms. In fact, they are different but related. The Web is a collection of interconnected documents and other files. The Internet, on the other hand, is a series of interconnected networks through which data can flow. Essentially, the Internet is the highway and Web files are just one type of data-rich vehicle capable of traveling along it. A Web browser, whether it is Internet Explorer, Mozilla Firefox, or Safari, is a software application that allows users to view these Web files. The distinction between Internet-based and browser-based is far from pedantic. SaaS can be either, but a truly Internet-based application has fewer limitations than a browser-based application for the following reasons: 1. Security from hackers Applications that rely on browsers can only transmit data in a way that browsers will understand. That means that even if the data is encrypted, it can (with some effort) be unencrypted and the data pieced back together and read. This is disastrous if the data is of a sensitive or private nature. If your application is Internet-based without relying on a browser, the application can transmit data in any way it chooses, as no other application has to be able to interpret it. If someone hacks in and intercepts and unencrypts your data as it is being transmitted across the Internet, they will just see tiny pieces of unintelligible data. Security-wise, it is similar to the difference between tearing your bank statements in half and cross-shredding them. 2. Security from viruses

Internet-based applications create a private platform between you and your data, unlike the public Web sites that a browser-based application relies on. Truly Internet-based applications therefore are less susceptible to viruses. 3. Faster running The other benefit of the Internet-based application is speed - because it stores a small amount of unique user information on each workstation the first time a user logs in, it subsequently will run similarly to any other program on your desktop, rather than having to get that information from the server each time, as a browser-based application does. Why, then, would application providers choose a browser-based model? Often, it is because they have moved from a client server model to take advantage of the economies of scale of a remote computing model, but rather than re-engineer the architecture of the entire system, which is expensive and requires considerable technological expertise, they have gone halfway, and provided remote servers and a browser-based interface with the application running on a Web site. Not that browsers are all bad; they are, of course, convenient and easy to access, and most SaaS providers provide a way to log in to the application via a Web site. However, the application will launch securely and independently from the browser. Where is the technology headed? Gone are the days when buying software for your business meant purchasing a disk and implementing the application yourself. More and more business application providers are seeing the advantages of software as a service and jumping on the Internet bandwagon. Once you know the questions to ask, you should be able to easily find a business solution that can offer high availability, good performance and security at a fraction of the cost of "client server" competitors. Because of the benefits outlined above, it is probable that the business software landscape will be almost entirely Internet-based within a decade. If you do your research, you can take advantage of this trend sooner rather than later.



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