•     •   7 min read

Cloud SaaS Technologies – An Effective Tool for Business

8 Key Ques­tions about SaaS

What is SaaS?

Soft­ware as a ser­vice (SaaS) is cloud-based soft­ware that pro­vides access to data from any device con­nect­ed to the Inter­net. Devel­op­ers of such soft­ware main­tain servers and databases.
The SaaS mod­el elim­i­nates costs asso­ci­at­ed with pur­chas­ing and main­tain­ing com­put­er equip­ment need­ed to install sta­tion­ary” soft­ware. The sys­tem’s sta­bil­i­ty is sup­port­ed by the developer.

There’s no need to pur­chase a license and make annu­al pay­ments of 15 – 20% for SaaS. The license and tech­ni­cal sup­port are already includ­ed in the soft­ware rental cost.

Is SaaS suit­able for all types of businesses?

It is believed that cloud soft­ware is pre­ferred by small and medi­um-sized busi­ness­es, where reduc­ing costs is essen­tial. For exam­ple, adver­tis­ing, trav­el, and dig­i­tal agen­cies. Large orga­ni­za­tions, espe­cial­ly those in niche indus­tries, are more inclined toward in-office admin­is­tered sys­tems. How­ev­er, as seen in the cas­es of com­pa­nies like Aston Mar­tin and Tri­pAd­vi­sor (dis­cussed below), SaaS ser­vices also have much to offer for man­ag­ing busi­ness oper­a­tions in large corporations.

When did SaaS appear?

The idea that cloud-based soft­ware could be used by busi­ness­es was pro­posed as ear­ly as 1961 by sci­en­tist John McCarthy, who coined the term arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence.” In the late 1990s and ear­ly 2000s, he wit­nessed Sales­force and oth­er com­pa­nies bring­ing his long-stand­ing sug­ges­tion to life.

Ini­tial­ly, SaaS ser­vices were not very pop­u­lar, but in the past 5 – 7 years, this mod­el has gained wide­spread adop­tion in the busi­ness world.

Can SaaS be customized?

Sta­tion­ary soft­ware is more flex­i­ble than cloud soft­ware. How­ev­er, SaaS devel­op­ers are steadi­ly address­ing this short­com­ing. In the past, busi­ness­es had to adapt ful­ly to the soft­ware. Now, they can cus­tomize the user inter­face, select the type of data dis­played, and even request devel­op­ers to add or remove cer­tain features.

Who will own the data?

Most ser­vice-lev­el agree­ments (SLAs) with SaaS devel­op­ers clear­ly state that the client owns the data. More­over, many providers allow for export­ing and back­ing up infor­ma­tion at any con­ve­nient time. If a com­pa­ny pro­vid­ing SaaS insists on own­ing the data, it’s best not to coop­er­ate with them.

Are the data secure?

Many SaaS devel­op­ers under­go audits to ensure that their data cen­ters are pro­tect­ed by the lead­ing Amer­i­can stan­dard SAS70 Type II. This means max­i­mum pro­tec­tion against exter­nal intru­sion and access to phys­i­cal infor­ma­tion car­ri­ers based on bio­met­ric data. Data cen­ters are under 247 secu­ri­ty, have back­up pow­er, and addi­tion­al net­work access channels.

What hap­pens if your SaaS provider shuts down?

Com­pa­nies pro­vid­ing SaaS usu­al­ly pre­pay host­ing orga­ni­za­tions where clients’ infor­ma­tion is stored. There­fore, in case of a force majeure event, the data will remain accessible.

The SLA also out­lines the provider’s ter­mi­na­tion sce­nario. It typ­i­cal­ly states that the client will get back their data in an agreed-upon format.

What if the Inter­net con­nec­tion is interrupted?

Depen­den­cy on an Inter­net con­nec­tion is the main dis­ad­van­tage of SaaS. How­ev­er, some devel­op­ers have already imple­ment­ed the abil­i­ty to work offline, with data sync­ing upon reconnection.

Advan­tages of SaaS

40% of all CRM sys­tems* sold in 2012 were SaaS. In 2013, half of the com­pa­nies in North Amer­i­ca and Europe were ready to invest in cloud tech­nolo­gies. Busi­ness­peo­ple leaned toward SaaS solu­tions because they did­n’t have to spend on equip­ment, instal­la­tion, and operation.
Accord­ing to IDC research, the SaaS mar­ket is expect­ed to reach a capac­i­ty of over $110 bil­lion in 2019, up from $50 bil­lion in 2018.

Pros and Cons of SaaS

Pros:

  1. Acces­si­ble at any time, any day of the week
  2. Can con­tin­ue work­ing on the go from a mobile device
  3. Sav­ings com­pared to boxed” ver­sions – about 60%
  4. Updates occur automatically
  5. Seri­ous data protection
  6. Com­pre­hen­sive licensed soft­ware package

Cons:

  1. Work is inter­rupt­ed with­out an Inter­net connection
  2. Less flex­i­ble com­pared to in-office systems
CRM sys­tem – soft­ware for automat­ing inter­ac­tions with cus­tomers. Used to increase sales, improve ser­vice, and opti­mize mar­ket­ing activ­i­ties. In Ukraine, CRM sys­tems from OneBox, 1C-Bitrix, Ter­ra­soft, Inte­gros, and oth­ers are used.

SaaS Mar­ket Leaders

Finan­cial indi­ca­tors of SaaS mar­ket lead­ers in 2013:

Com­pa­ny Name

Mar­ket Cap­i­tal­iza­tion (Bil­lion USD)

Prof­it (Mil­lion USD)

Sales­force

26.7

3972

LinkedIn

26.1

1511

Work­day

12.9

439

Net­Suite

7.3

409

Ser­vi­ceNow

5.8

409

Con­cur Technologies

5.6

576

Athenahealth

4.2

539

The Ulti­mate Soft­ware Group

4.1

409

Cor­ner­stone OnDemand

2.7

185

Medi­da­ta

2.3

276

Sales­force – a com­pa­ny that was at the fore­front of SaaS. Known for its CRM sys­tems, which can be used in small busi­ness­es, star­tups, and var­i­ous indus­tries. Sales­force’s prod­ucts include Data.com, Par­dot, Sales Cloud, Ser­vice Cloud, App Cloud, Desk.com.

LinkedIn – a social net­work for estab­lish­ing busi­ness con­tacts used by near­ly 500 mil­lion users world­wide. Although its SaaS affil­i­a­tion is some­times con­test­ed due to a lack of pure” fea­tures, the avail­abil­i­ty of a pre­mi­um sub­scrip­tion for expand­ing the client base or enhanced spe­cial­ist search argues for its SaaS status.

Work­day pro­duces appli­ca­tions for finan­cial man­age­ment, team man­age­ment, and even assists stu­dents in learning.

Net­Suite – cloud SaaS tech­nolo­gies for resource plan­ning, e‑commerce, account­ing, inven­to­ry man­age­ment, and more.

Ser­vi­ceNow – cre­ates appli­ca­tions for IT ser­vice man­age­ment (ITSM), essen­tial­ly project man­age­ment in IT.

Con­cur Tech­nolo­gies focus­es on appli­ca­tions for trav­el­ers and expense tracking.

Athenahealth offers cloud appli­ca­tions for the med­ical sector.

The Ulti­mate Soft­ware Group cre­ates soft­ware for per­son­nel man­age­ment in var­i­ous fields and for busi­ness­es of dif­fer­ent sizes.

Cor­ner­stone OnDe­mand offers man­age­ment ser­vices used by 12 mil­lion users in 190 coun­tries worldwide.

Medi­da­ta devel­ops cloud appli­ca­tions that aid in web­site development.

Exam­ples of SaaS Use

Let’s look at how SaaS busi­ness solu­tions helped renowned com­pa­nies improve their per­for­mance. The cas­es were shared by cloud soft­ware mar­ket lead­ers – Sales­force and Workday.

Sales­force Case: Aston Martin

The Eng­lish com­pa­ny Aston Mar­tin has been pro­duc­ing pres­ti­gious sports cars for over 100 years. Most mod­els are hand-assem­bled, so less than 100,000 cars have been man­u­fac­tured over a cen­tu­ry. In 2016, the com­pa­ny intro­duced the DB11 mod­el – the first prod­uct devel­oped under the six-year Sec­ond Cen­tu­ry plan. The car is posi­tioned as a blend of excep­tion­al design, excel­lent per­for­mance, and ever-rel­e­vant luxury.

DB11, сайт Aston Martin

DB11, web­sir Aston Martin
To draw atten­tion to its new devel­op­ment, Aston Mar­tin need­ed to improve its data­base man­age­ment. The com­pa­ny had accu­mu­lat­ed a vast amount of infor­ma­tion that need­ed struc­tur­ing. Much of the data came from deal­ers – over 150 rep­re­sen­ta­tives in more than 40 coun­tries world­wide. The lack of a uni­fied infor­ma­tion sys­tem with deal­ers led to missed poten­tial clients.

A year before the DB11 release, the com­pa­ny imple­ment­ed the Sales Cloud sys­tem. Pre­vi­ous­ly, only ten employ­ees worked with client data, main­ly ana­lyz­ing their age. To adapt to the new sys­tem, Aston Mar­t­in’s IT depart­ment used anoth­er tool from Sales­force – Trail­head, which con­tains train­ing lessons.

Sales Cloud, сайт Salecsforce

Now, more than 150 Aston Mar­tin employ­ees and 500 deal­er­ship staff use Sales Cloud to col­lect, track, and dis­trib­ute infor­ma­tion about the com­pa­ny’s capa­bil­i­ties and cus­tomer pref­er­ences. They also ana­lyze data on clients who chose oth­er pre­mi­um car manufacturers.

Work­day Case: TripAdvisor

Found­ed in 2000, Tri­pAd­vi­sor is now the largest trav­el web­site. Its month­ly audi­ence exceeds 300 mil­lion unique users, of whom more than 70 mil­lion are reg­is­tered. The site oper­ates in 25 lan­guages across 45 countries.

In late 2011, Tri­pAd­vi­sor was sep­a­rat­ed from its par­ent com­pa­ny – anoth­er trav­el web­site, Expe­dia, whose ERP sys­tem* it used. The sys­tem was not remote; it was installed on servers and com­put­ers in the office. Tri­pAd­vi­sor’s man­agers were dis­sat­is­fied with its speed: they had to wait for ana­lyt­ics and reports. With the site’s grow­ing traf­fic, such an ERP sys­tem hin­dered progress.

Work­day offered an alter­na­tive. Its Human Cap­i­tal Man­age­ment sys­tem was imple­ment­ed in five months, while the Finan­cial Man­age­ment sys­tem took sev­en months to install.

Workday Financial Management, сайт Workday
Work­day Finan­cial Man­age­ment, Work­day’s website

Ver­dict

SaaS is a ser­vice pro­vid­ed through a web inter­face. The soft­ware is deployed in a data cen­ter and offered under a rental agree­ment with reg­u­lar pay­ments. The cost cov­ers not just soft­ware use but also the provider’s expens­es for tech­ni­cal sup­port, updates, and data pro­tec­tion. All ser­vices oper­ate this way.

For exam­ple, Work­sec­tion pro­vides project man­age­ment, allow­ing com­plete con­trol over finances and dead­lines. The num­ber of con­nect­ed par­tic­i­pants (unlike oth­er sim­i­lar pro­grams) does not affect the tar­iff; the cost depends only on the num­ber of projects and the cloud stor­age volume.
SaaS for small busi­ness­es and larg­er orga­ni­za­tions is an excel­lent way to dras­ti­cal­ly reduce cap­i­tal expen­di­tures with­out com­pro­mis­ing functionality.

esc
Share
или
PM school
Hive has long been a powerful workspace, yet even the most advanced platform can miss the mark for some teams. If you need a Hive alternative in 2025, start by defining your goals: faster performance...
23 June 2025   •   7 min read
PM school
Planfix is deservedly considered a powerful all-in-one solution for task and process management, but not all companies find its price, complex interface, and need for script customization suitable. If...
23 June 2025   •   9 min read
PM school
Time is ticking, budgets won’t wait, and your team might be spread across different time zones. This is a familiar situation for any company where precise time tracking is critical. Clockify remains a...
20 June 2025   •   8 min read
Get started now
Please enter your real email 🙂