Just what is SaaS - and is TourCMS an SaaS?

There has been a lot in the business press - on both sides of the Atlantic - about SaaS - or Software as a service. In this article I will try and explain a little about what we think it means, and how it effects you. 

We define SaaS as a centrally hosted and managed software service. Instead of the software being installed on your own servers, its on our servers, and you have access to the software.

What it means to you
It comes down to the following key considerations:

• You don’t need to continue investing in hardware, server support, security audits or even IT staff, as we take care of these problems
• Data is backed up consistently 
• You can be up and running in hours or days - rather than weeks
• You can have a trial account - as this doesn’t require any additional expenditure (or time) on our part

What it means to us
For us, SaaS is much more convenient than going the server installed route.

The following are the key benefits:

• Once we roll out latest code releases to the data center, we know that all customers will be running the latest version. This asissts with support enquiries - as we can easily replicate any problems on our development systems - rather than trying to work out whether a problem is due to an older version of TourCMS that should have been updated - but wasn’t.
• We know the hardware that the software is installed on. Its our hardware. Therefore we (following our constant security audits) are confident that the software is working in unison with the hardware, and that the hardware is fit for purpose.
• We can offer you the software at a much lower rate than the distributed server installed software.
• We can license 3rd party software components and integrate within our product - and pay less license fees -as we are not having to pay for distribution licenses - just for a few servers.

TourCMS started out (in 2003) as a distributed server installed software - but this is now our history - not our future. The reality was that TourCMS was not affordable to the customers it was aimed at - small to medium sized tour operators and event companies - as the IT overheads were too high.

I think Gartner (the IT research group) stated that by 2008, more than 50% of software purchased will be via the SaaS model. I hope this is right!

Any comments? 

Alex

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