To SaaS, or not to SaaS – That is the question.

I’ve been asked at least a dozen times over the last month “What are the benefits of a cloud-based hosted subscription versus an on-premises software deployment?”.

“Though this be madness, yet there is method in't.” ~Hamlet

There are many benefits of going SaaS, just like there are benefits of deploying on-premises.  It all comes down to the problems you are trying to solve, budgeting preferences, and IT resource availability and expertise.  Here are some benefits of going the hosted route.

• Fast and easy deployment:  SaaS solutions are often available instantly, providing an amazingly fast time-to-value.  You don’t need to install any software/hardware yourself and there are no complicated firewall or security configurations to work through.
• Budgeting flexibility & lower up front cost:  Hosted subscriptions are treated as an “operating expense” with no capital investment spent on software/hardware.  Pay-as-you-go subscription plans often lead to quicker purchase decisions because there is no need to get CapEx budget sign-off.
• Less taxing on your IT resources:  SaaS solutions require significantly less effort to deploy and maintain.  There are no ongoing software upgrades, patches or backups for you to worry about, and no complex security/compliance configurations to be responsible for internally.  Plus, there is no underlying infrastructure to assemble and maintain.
• Built-in scalability:  The elasticity and high bandwidth of SaaS solutions easily handles spikes in usage and grows as organizational needs expand.
• Near perfect uptime:  Hosted services are often run in a highly available, load-balanced, automatic failover configuration to ensure even the strictest network and application uptime requirements and SLAs are met.

I’d like to also quickly mention that we’ve had numerous customers initially deploy our MOVEit DMZ Hosted Service as a way to get their Managed File Transfer solution up and running quickly, while they continue to work towards an on-premises deployment.

The growth of SaaS can’t be denied.... The question is, whether 'tis SaaS right for your organization?