Comparison of SaaS and traditional software

Considering the recently launched marketing hyip about SaaS and the rising anti-SaaS movement, I wanted to understand what is the fundamental difference between SaaS and traditional software, and now I present my thoughts on this subject to your judgment. I will clarify that the comparison was made as if on behalf of the decision maker on the choice of SaaS, and not its developer or provider, who have criteria for whether to engage in SaaS business or not, of course, others.

The comparison is based on a number of criteria, the list of which may not be complete and you can add them in the comments and, if you missed something, add it to the main table.

Criterion	SaaS	Traditional software
Product payment	Monthly payment and no more payments	As if once bought and everything, but software manufacturers are trying to take additional money for support, for receiving updates, for the next version, etc.
Updates	Always the newest version, the service provider is responsible for the update.	It is necessary to update independently, and if there are a lot of servers, this can result in a rather significant investment of time and money.
Payment for infrastructure	None, all included in the fee for the service itself	You need to buy servers, additional software for them (offhand - the operating system, virtualization tools, antivirus, backup system), plus invest in the staff serving these servers and software
The possibility of buying a smaller infrastructure resource	In some cases (hosting, backup systems, application servers) you can only pay for the amount of the resource that you directly receive, and as the load increases, you can get an increase in the resource only at these peak times.	No, the system must be purchased specifically for the design peak loads.
Data Control and Security	There is no control, and often the service does not even support any means of exporting data to other systems or simply to backup, you have to rely on the SaaS provider for all data security issues. In some cases, your data may even be used by a SaaS provider for resale or use by third parties (for example, creating various analytics or showing targeted ads)	Full control over the data, but accordingly additional costs for ensuring their security. Only the organization itself has access to the data.
The possibility of self-expanding functionality	In some cases, the functionality of the service can be extended by creating modules or plug-ins.	Full control over the software functionality when using Open Source products
Internet access	Required and preferably broadband	Not obligatory and in some cases may be absent at all

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In general, the estimates for each of the above criteria can be assessed in favor of SaaS or traditional software, as well as against. For example, the fact that we have a constantly updated product in SaaS can be a plus of SaaS - we actually get new functionality for free, or a minus - we need to constantly retrain personnel to work with these new features.

In general, it can be concluded that using SaaS is preferable for small and medium-sized companies in cases not involving the transfer of their own data to the cloud, or working with commercial information of value in the medium term (for example, data on the company's public website or CRM data and information on commercial contracts of interest within a year, or even months, not more). To work with commercial information of long-term value (a year or more) it is preferable to use your own systems and staff, but in some cases you can still contact SaaS if the service negotiates and provides data protection conditions and conditions for their export from the system to standard or additional service level agreement (SLA).