A Study on SaaS

As the Palmisano Report (2004) point outs, there is a growing trend towards trying to build innovation networks in a more conscious fashion ; innovation focusing on service oriented style or service science. In the ITsystems world, these movements will be translated into the fashionable key words "Software as a Service : SaaS". The word "Service" means that customers pay not for owning or producing the software itself but for using or leasing it. SaaS is a software application delivery model where a software vendor develops a webnative software application and hosts and operates the application for use by its customers over the Internet. There are two types of SaaS providers.The first is an ASP where a customer purchases and brings to a hosting company a copy of the software (a singletalent architecture). The second type of SaaS offers what is often called software ondemand,where a company offers to customers software specifically built for one-to-many hosting (a multitalent architecture). Key characteristics of SaaS software are: 1. network-based access to commercially available software 2. activities that are managed from central locations rather than at each customers site, enabling customers to access aplications remotely via the web 3. application delivery that typically is closer to a one-to-many model than to a one-to-one model 4. centralised feature-updating, which obviates the need for downloadable patches and upgrades. In brief, SaaS is beginning to shift from a pure software application delivery scheme to a very sophisticated usage and delivery model for business process functionality. This paper discusses the concept of SaaS, key characteristics of software deliverd by SaaS, a comparison of APS versus SaaS, the concepts of SOA, Ajax, Rich client, and so on.12KJ00005071787研究ノートLETTERjournal articl