The last few years have seen a huge paradigm shift for many software vendors. The move away from a product-based model towards software-as-a-service (SAAS) in the cloud has brought huge changes. The main advantage of moving from a product based model to software-as-a-service is that the companies will be able to identify the service usage of how and why a product is being used. Earlier software companies used to run a survey or focus groups of customer feedback to identify the how and why a product is being used. This customer feedback survey has various limitations on identifying the product usage or where the product improvement has to be made.
Autodesk was one of the frontrunners in the field, having been experimenting with the cloud based SAAS as far back as 2001 when it is acquired the BUZZSAW file sharing and synchronization service. Since then Microsoft, Adobe and many others moving into a subscription based, on-demand service and Autodesk has done the same with its core computer aided design products.
Software-as-a-service is a software licensing and delivery model in which software is licensed on a subscription basis and is centrally hosted. It is sometimes referred to as on-demand software. On-premise software is the exact opposite where the delivery of product is inside the particular organizations infrastructure.
Understanding how customers use a product is critical to giving them what they want. In a SAAS environment where everything is happening online and in the cloud, companies can gain a far more accurate picture of when, how and why a product is used.
The idea of moving to cloud based subscription model gives the business to understand more about the product usage of customers. This gives them the edge to serve better to the customers. The shift in the industry shall not be ignored. Big Data is really being used now to understand how and where to improve the product.
The Indian IT industry is focusing mainly on Cloud, Analytics, Mobile and Social segment to further drive growth. This Software-as-a-service delivery model can certainly give the edge to do data analysis on where and how the product is used.
There are number of reasons why Software-as-a-service is beneficial to organizations:
No additional hardware costs, you can buy the processing power or hardware as per the requirement. Do not have to go for high end configuration as there is no requirement. Need based subscription.
Usage is scalable. You can scale whenever you require.
Applications can be customised.
Accessible from any location, rather than being restricted to installations on individual computers an application can be accessed from anywhere with an internet enabled device.
The adoption of cloud based delivery model is accelerating mainly because of the analytical capability it gives the business to understand the customers. Analytics rocks!.
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