SAS in SAAS format: plus minus

The term SaaS has been used so often lately that it was no longer clear how we lived without it before. And it is difficult to imagine that there are still branches where this insidious word has not yet penetrated. Of course, there are such industries. For example, SaaS has not yet been buried in the credibility of electronic document management systems - although perhaps not for long. We, as developers of the SED, are already seriously concerned with the question of how much the SaaS model is needed in relation to the SED.

SaaS is a fashionable phenomenon, and he, like a big ship, is predicted to have a great future swimming . True, there are still concerns that this large ship is actually called the Titanic. Therefore, we tried to weigh all the pros and cons that will appear when developing the SED in the SaaS format.

Pros:
Savings for users on hardware - and its requirements are reduced, and when new, more sophisticated applications come out, there is no need to update the PC fleet. This is an essential aspect that can seriously and, importantly, permanently increase the number of companies working with the system.
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Today's money is more expensive than tomorrow's - this is already an axiom, so it will be more profitable for the consumer to work on a SaaS model that does not require the purchase of the software itself.
Lack of binding or mobility. When using the SaaS model, you can work in a system outside the office or even in the country. So even an employee on vacation can be forced to “clean up” the urgently needed document.

Another couple of significant advantages - flexibility and scalability, which also became the talk of the town. Those. There is no need to act according to the principle “we take everything” - in this case it is easier to weed out all unnecessary and get exactly what the customer needs. In addition, if the need arises to increase jobs or - God forbid neither us nor business - to reduce them, everything is solved very simply. Let not in one click, but in essence, in one call. Simplicity is at hand to both us and the customer.

Yes, there is another important aspect - with the SaaS model, it’s impossible to use pirated software, so the problem of piracy is solved once and for all. True, with regard to EDS, this problem is not so urgent, but who knows where the national informatization will take in the future.

Minuses:
Savings on hardware for the consumer beats the developer's pocket - after all, he will have to spend money on the maintenance of infrastructure. In this regard, it is possible to talk for a long time about the server component, and about the need to organize an adequate throughput channel, including about its mandatory reservation.

The downside is profit and payback: sales of decisions, of course, are financially more profitable for the seller - and now they are profitable, rather than through a mythical few years. Those. in fact, the same principle of today's expensive money is in effect, only with the exact opposite.
There is also a question of security - this can also be called a psychological problem.

Security developers already say that thanks to mobile devices, the perimeter that can be protected has ceased to exist, so the protection of information has become extremely difficult. And then there is the whole document flow, without which the company cannot exist, will go “on the side”. Here, serious software developers of antivirus solutions “source” software is carried away, and the documents with some important trade secret all the more look like a tasty morsel. Those. customers will have to choose a service provider for a long time, who can be trusted with all the most expensive. Agree that this process is complex, lengthy and time consuming. In addition, the full reliability of the hosting provider should be ensured, and they, as shown by relatively recent high-profile events with a single space hosting service, are not always reliable and predictable.

Another complication is interaction with the corresponding software of the hosting provider, for example, for this, the desired generation of license keys online. The relationship with the hosting provider in general deserves separate consideration, since there are its own pitfalls in the way of mutually beneficial cooperation. Full trust is needed here, because, for example, the provider receives money for services. In addition, it is important to correctly assess the power reserve of the provider's servers, because of course, the user is not concerned about the reasons why he cannot use the capabilities of the product.

Perhaps we have forgotten something in the pros and cons, but still the result is a twofold situation. On the one hand, the pros are more applicable to customers, while the disadvantages are just to us, the manufacturers of the SED. On the other hand, if it is profitable for the client, there will be a demand. If we don’t, the competitors will. In fact, we have somewhat turned our heads - our company is already working on this model and, upon request, we are already ready to provide the ERMS in the format of "application rental". So, in essence, we have already decided for ourselves that we need it, but the question of the prospects for the SaaS model for EDS, in our opinion, is still open.