Small business and SaaS \ S + S

In my experience with SaaS \ S + S (software as a service), I highlighted a few questions that usually ask people who make purchasing decisions in small businesses. I will try to answer them and hopefully dispel some of the fears and prejudices.

So the first question.

- How can I give my data to other uncles? What if they disappear? What if someone will use my customer base?

Here you should ask a counter question.
- Do you have mail on mail.ru, yandex, google on your website? And how often do you send through her accounts, important files? And who ensures her safety?
It is here that it turns out that we already use the services of third-party companies, store personal and confidential data and do not receive much of ANY guarantee of security and reliability of storage, if anything happens, no one is responsible for anything.
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And what about SaaS providers? It's all strict! Between the provider and the user, agreements are made on the quality of service and non-disclosure of confidential data, which legally reinforce the relationship between the two parties and impose on the provider, including financial responsibility for the client's information.

The second question.

- How long will it all be installed and implemented? How much money will I spend on it?

Due to the fact that all software is leased, the implementation process is reduced to registration and short software configuration, i.e. There is no need to spend time and money for a long period of installation and implementation, to deploy your own servers and infrastructure.

Question three

- How reliable is all this? Where are the performance guarantees? How secure is my data?

Security. It is in this issue that the consumer receives the greatest gain compared with the introduction of the software "at home". In most small companies, the system administrator does everything! From setting up and repairing printers to configuring complex business software, it’s almost impossible to find such a specialist, and even if he is, he is not always able to cover everything equally. I will give a comparison of the provider and the system administrator in the company.

Parameter
- Administrator (incoming) (A)
- Service provider (C)

A responsibility
A: Responsible to the company only as an individual, i.e. If no one returns the data that was lost in the case of server failure, for example.
C: As a legal entity, bears full responsibility with the parameters and metrics clearly stated in the Service Level Agreement (SLA) and is responsible for the security of your information.

Experience
A: Limited only by the knowledge of himself, perhaps his acquaintances.
S: A team is working on the provider! certified professionals

Quality of service
A: Monitoring, timely backup, efficiency? Unfortunately, in small companies one person is not able to provide this, in the event of a failure, it’s far from the fact that you restore your data and that the backup was made on time and in general.
S: Here we refer to the very same SLA, it clearly states that the provider is obliged to make backup copies of the data, and is responsible for the performance and recovery after failures.

Expertise
A: Not every system administrator has experience in supporting, let alone deploying complex ERP, CRM business software ... and in the event of problems, you will most likely have to contact an outside company for advice.
S: The provider has extensive experience in the maintenance and deployment of complex systems, they have close contact with the developers of the proposed software and, accordingly, all their expertise.

The fourth and most important question

- Price! How much will it cost me?
Everything is pretty transparent here, the cost of implementing any solution is made up of several factors: the cost of software licenses, additional staff or existing training, the cost of implementation services, the cost of the infrastructure necessary for the software to work.
In the case of SaaS, all of these huge for a small business one-time investments are reduced to small monthly payments only for REALLY used software , for that period and the number of users that the company now needs.

Thus, choosing SaaS, a small business can use the software available, large companies, for little money, there is no need for large capital investments, software update is seamless and does not affect its value.

I hope I convinced some skeptics that there are advantages to using SaaS \ S + S software, and this technology allows small companies to automate their business without huge one-time capital expenditures, to get support and not worry about the integrity of their data.

several links on the subject:
List of service providers on the Microsoft website