What Characterizes the SaaS Software Delivery Model?
How do you quality a software vendor as a SaaS vendor? They might call themselves that, but are they really keeping the promise?
The definition of SaaS is quite fuzzy, but here is an attempt to list some of the key characteristics (some of them from Wikipedia.org) of SaaS as software delivery model:
The definition of SaaS is quite fuzzy, but here is an attempt to list some of the key characteristics (some of them from Wikipedia.org) of SaaS as software delivery model:
- Commercially available software
- Multiple customers run the same software (instance) but with virtually separate data stores
- Accessed remotely via the Internet
- Rich application interface
- Centralized updates
- Frequent updates possible without disturbing the service
- Designed to be scalable
- Well-defined and documented API
- Adaptable by configuration
- Extensible to customer-specific needs
- Adaptions and extensions can be done by customer or third party supplier
- Supports reuse by application exchange
- Tools are available for operating, monitoring and control
- Customers pay for their consumption and not (in advance) for the development of the service