Software as a Service a delivery model?

Software as a service is a delivery model.

I've read many posts of late trying to explain software as a service, cloud computing, service model marketing, etc. But if you boil it all down, SaaS is a delivery model. A different (and successful) way of delivering software. Sadly, many companies are trying to port their existing applications over to the Internet by recreating their applications in similar formats to their CD, DVD, bundled/boxed software. This is a disastrous approach for a number of reasons.

Each iteration of the bundled software made the product bigger and harder to maintain. Hence, if you are a software company, why SaaS looked so attractive to you in the first place. It made it easier to distribute. One update and everyone was on the same code-base. No more supporting multiple iterations of the software either and bogging down support staff with the burden of knowing all the version changes. It made delivery easier.

However, along the way companies began to recreate rather than re-think in an effort to ride the big Web 2.0 wave. Each day we learn of old products now being re-marketed on the Internet as SaaS. It seems like a good idea, right? We get to deliver faster to market and reduce delivery costs. But it is still the same old product.

Companies need to rethink their current software model and begin to look at what I am going to call here as Modular Marketing. In coming posts I will discuss my thoughts on how SaaS provides companies with an opportunity to re-engineer their revenue models around singular processes that not only can stand on their own but also complement each other in their integration. The most successful SaaS companies on the Internet are built around similar complementary models.

SaaS is definitely a delivery model. But it can be one that delivers on an expansion of market opportunities as well as more efficient workflows and integration.