SaaS - What is it now?

Ok..We have another buzzword "SaaS" (clarified by one of my friends as not Ekta Kapoor's SaaS (bhi kabhi bahu thi)) :-)

SaaS - Software As A Service: To me it does not sound much difference from ASP (Application Service Provider) model. ASP based model were successful and worked out well for many companies (specially timesheet management, bug posting, mail and even some banking software were hosted on ASP environments). Now, SaaS has more support from SOA (Service Oriented Architecture) community also and trends are moving towards service management and provisioning on contractual basis - with SaaS, the clients need not buy or worry abour hardware, software, maintenance, upgradation etc.

In this model, instead of on-site hosting of the application and infrastructure, everything will be out-sourced..But SaaS providers now have to provide better security and QoS (Quality of Service). This is true in case financial/insurance companies want to leverage this model, the providers will have to obtain security/audit certificates from SAS 70 auditors [http://www.sas70.com/faq/faq1.htm]. Most of the time security and infrastructure provided by the service providers is better managed than on-site infrastructure. The client will have to pay a fixed/variable fee to use the hosted services and environment (probably annual contract).

This may be very cool in Indian context, where SMB (Small and Medium Business) and small government bodies/schools/colleges may not buy the whole software and hardware to setup/manager their own applications. they can contact SaaS providers for solutions. IBM has shown keen interest in this field and definitely they have will to do and resources to provide quality services specially in emerging markets such as India, China, Brazil, Russia, African nations etc. one such example could be offering Lotus Quickr and Lotus Connections itself as SaaS and fullfil the QoS paramters set by the clients (could be bandwidth, security, user access, maintenance, availability)..This way, small companies/bodies need not invest heavily on infrastructure (DEV/TEST/STAGING envrionments) and TCO (Total Cost of Ownership) is with SaaS..I like this model very much and isn't IBM had been doing this successfully with Bharti and Idea accounts in India..So, they have shown that this model is workable, but need to standardize this model by adopting certification criteria and adhering to those to fullfil the contract with different clients.