Software as a service. (SAAS)
Talked about IAAS a while back, now here is another part of the cloud.
From Wikipedia - History of SAAS:
Centralized hosting of business applications dates back to the 1960s. Starting in that decade, IBM and other mainframe providers conducted a service bureau business, often referred to as time-sharing or utility computing. Such services included offering computing power and database storage to banks and other large organizations from their worldwide data centers.
The expansion of the Internet during the 1990s brought about a new class of centralized computing, called Application Service Providers (ASP). ASPs provided businesses with the service of hosting and managing specialized business applications, with the goal of reducing costs through central administration and through the solution provider's specialization in a particular business application. Two of the world's pioneers and largest ASPs were USI, which was headquartered in the Washington, D.C. area, and Futurelink Corporation, headquartered in Orange County California.
Software as a service essentially extends the idea of the ASP model. The term Software as a Service (SaaS), however, is commonly used in more specific settings:
DbaaS (Database as a Service) has emerged as a sub-variety of SaaS.
Saas is a big responsibility. Not only do you have to have virtually a 24/7 service, but you must also protect data and access. So more than likely you will see a two level or tier setup. That separates the client data from the direct web access for more security. Since there are several web servers usually set up in a cluster formation. if one goes down the rest of the servers can take up the slack until the downed server can ber resolved. To the web user, it will seem like they are just accessing one server.
SAAS advantages are you do not have to have the infra structure and IT support a larger business might need. All you need are systems that can access the web. Reasons why the touchpads are so popular. For example a doctors office could access a specific web application running on an SAAS server such as EMR to keep all the records. So whether the doctor is in the hospital or at a patients home, all the medical data is at the doctors fingertips. (As long as you have internet access).
You could also use a generic application where word processing , spreadsheets and etc are at your finger tips. Eyeos for example runs on the server. No software to install and keep updated on a client machine except the web browser. (http://www.instructables.com/id/eyeOS/)
SAAS is not just for business, you can also serve out home applications also. That means applications such as games or even a web based recipe program can be at your fingertips.
Businesses and home users do not have to depend on big business to have their own SAAS. In some cases, it is more secure to do so (with proper setup). We have our own server and you can see some of the applications that we have installed at:
http://www.instructables.com/id/Uses-for-your-own-private-cloud/
Probably means you will need some kind of IT support to have your own server. We use older hardware for servers running open source software which allows us to recycle our own equipment saving many dollars.
From Wikipedia - History of SAAS:
Centralized hosting of business applications dates back to the 1960s. Starting in that decade, IBM and other mainframe providers conducted a service bureau business, often referred to as time-sharing or utility computing. Such services included offering computing power and database storage to banks and other large organizations from their worldwide data centers.
The expansion of the Internet during the 1990s brought about a new class of centralized computing, called Application Service Providers (ASP). ASPs provided businesses with the service of hosting and managing specialized business applications, with the goal of reducing costs through central administration and through the solution provider's specialization in a particular business application. Two of the world's pioneers and largest ASPs were USI, which was headquartered in the Washington, D.C. area, and Futurelink Corporation, headquartered in Orange County California.
Software as a service essentially extends the idea of the ASP model. The term Software as a Service (SaaS), however, is commonly used in more specific settings:
- whereas most initial ASPs focused on managing and hosting third-party independent software vendors' software, as of 2012 SaaS vendors typically develop and manage their own software
- whereas many initial ASPs offered more traditional client-server applications, which require installation of software on users' personal computers, contemporary SaaS solutions rely predominantly on the Web and only require an internet browser to use
- whereas the software architecture used by most initial ASPs mandated maintaining a separate instance of the application for each business, as of 2012 SaaS solutions normally utilize a multi-tenant architecture, in which the application serves multiple businesses and users, and partitions its data accordingly
DbaaS (Database as a Service) has emerged as a sub-variety of SaaS.
Saas is a big responsibility. Not only do you have to have virtually a 24/7 service, but you must also protect data and access. So more than likely you will see a two level or tier setup. That separates the client data from the direct web access for more security. Since there are several web servers usually set up in a cluster formation. if one goes down the rest of the servers can take up the slack until the downed server can ber resolved. To the web user, it will seem like they are just accessing one server.
You could also use a generic application where word processing , spreadsheets and etc are at your finger tips. Eyeos for example runs on the server. No software to install and keep updated on a client machine except the web browser. (http://www.instructables.com/id/eyeOS/)
SAAS is not just for business, you can also serve out home applications also. That means applications such as games or even a web based recipe program can be at your fingertips.
Businesses and home users do not have to depend on big business to have their own SAAS. In some cases, it is more secure to do so (with proper setup). We have our own server and you can see some of the applications that we have installed at:
http://www.instructables.com/id/Uses-for-your-own-private-cloud/
Probably means you will need some kind of IT support to have your own server. We use older hardware for servers running open source software which allows us to recycle our own equipment saving many dollars.
Very well written about the SAAS service, we are also working with software as a service saas.
ReplyDelete