6 good reasons to make the move to SaaS.
Twenty years ago, SaaS was a little-known term. Fast forward to 2021 and SMEs in the UK are becoming increasingly familiar with the term and the concept.
For example, Microsoft (Office) 365 SaaS has been the logical choice for businesses when moving from Microsoft Outlook OEM. The Microsoft (Office) 365 SaaS suite provides access not only to emails but Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Teams and SharePoint from the Cloud – all from a single licence model and from any internet capable device. SaaS is about named users and log in credentials – and is not tied to specific devices.
SaaS Explained
SaaS is a software distribution model in which a service provider hosts applications for customers and makes them available to these customers via the internet.
Simply put, SaaS gives companies the ability to operate on mobile devices and computers with data storage in the cloud – reducing and in some cases eliminating the need for onsite servers and the associated expenses of the same.
FACT
The cost of on premise, physical servers is ever increasing as the supply chain becomes more limited due to falling demand as more businesses move towards a ‘serverless’ infrastructure.
SaaS makes your business more agile.
A SaaS model ensures faster, reliable, real time and flexible access to your business information. This in turn supports the making of informed decisions rather than relying on a ‘gut feeling’ or delaying making a decision at all!
UK businesses are increasingly moving to SaaS solutions to reduce costs, allow for more flexibility within the software and alleviate the pressure from staff who bear the responsibilities for IT health and security.
In 2019 Gartner forecast that by 2022, SaaS will have gone through exponential growth (and judging by the upsurge in SaaS subscriptions during 2020 alone, they weren’t wrong) and industry pundits predicted that 80% of all enterprise (and mission-critical) workloads will have moved to the cloud by 2024.
6 good reasons to make the move to SaaS.
SaaS Cost
With SaaS, there is nothing for you to buy or build, which eliminates upfront software fees and subsequent upgrades.
SaaS is a’ pay-as-you-go system’ that works like a rental. You pay a service provider to host and manage your data and information without the high upfront cost of a license. Less of the ownership falls on your IT department, which can reduce your IT maintenance costs by as much as 17%. Since you can easily adjust the services based on your business’s needs, you are not paying for any more or less than you need.
SaaS Security
On-premise breaches require resources, time, and money to manage and resolve. Whilst you will likely have a support contract in place for your business software and a robust firewall, it is just a fact that it takes longer to reinstate your data with on-premise software if you have a data breach. Hackers and cyber criminals are continually finding new ways to ruin your day.
SaaS offers the crucial advantage as the software is hosted in a secure cloud environment deploying a network of servers, with a team who is constantly monitoring and defending your data against security attacks.
A SaaS environment lowers the attack surface to threats, but in the unlikely event of a breach, the recovery would not impact your resources, and your vendor and your software business partner would be responsible for quickly managing and correcting the problem under the terms of software vendor’s global SLA. The SLA for Microsoft’s Dynamics Business Central can be accesses through this page
SaaS Scalability
Since SaaS is hosted externally, changing your usage plan is painless and can be done in a timely manner. With SaaS solutions, businesses no longer must second guess their user numbers. This is a huge benefit for organizations that are growing quickly as well as enterprises whose volume production tends to be more cyclical in nature.
Example: During the first 2020 lockdown Qi made recommendations to companies furloughing staff to reduce their licence numbers for SaaS products until they could bring their staff back to work.
SaaS Reliability
- Adopting SaaS means no need to consider your software’s lifecycle and budget for upgrade implementations.
- SaaS Upgrades and fixes are automatically available to you
- SaaS offers over 99% + uptime for your software, so no more costly downtime that occurs with on-premise software.
SaaS Flexibity
Not all SaaS software can be customised to meet particular industry requirements, but many SaaS Enterprise Resource Planning solutions can be.
Microsoft’s Dynamics 365 Business Central, is customised using the standard extensions toolbox. Extensions is the common global development platform for Business Central thus whatever you have developed to sit inside your core Business Central deployment can be supported and developed further by all accredited Business Partners, both in the UK and globally. As a result – businesses can customise their SaaS software with a business partner but not experience the ‘golden handcuffs’ of traditional bespoke developments which have historically been at best difficult or at worst impossible to get supported by any other software developer than the bespoke author.
In addition, and to support appeal across all industries, software vendors such as Microsoft encourage the use of pre-developed and authorised specialist functionality via MicrosoftAppSource. This enables businesses to avoid the cost of any development by using a pre-existing app for a monthly subscription. As your business needs change – you can add or change the apps you need.
SaaS returns a Quicker Deployment
With no server requirements, SaaS software can be deployed more quick;y than an on-premise version. While your subject matter experts and internal project managers have tasks and responsibilities throughout the deployment process, more of the ownership and responsibility is placed on your software provider. A typical project timeline for example for a deployment of Business Central SaaS with Qi is 4 weeks. A typical on-premise deployment of NAV (Business Central’s predecessor) was 10 weeks. A smartly delivered SaaS project will realize a ROI faster than an on-premise version.
Thought for the Day
Prepare Your Business for the Future with a move to SaaS
There is no question: SaaS is the way of the future. The move from on-premise to a cloud environment is already present in many businesses in the UK.
Since 2017 Microsoft (Office) 365 SaaS has exceeded the use of on premise Microsoft Office.
Businesses who do not have the appetite to keep pace with the changing landscape of business software deployment are at risk of being left behind on legacy software which will leave them vulnerable and facing unnecessarily high expenses at the point they are forced to move ‘wholesale’ to the cloud.
Why not contact Qi to discuss how SaaS models will support your business?