SaaS Consulting

More and more organizations today are opting to work on a SaaS (Software-as-a-Service) model as they continue to adopt outsourced models for automating critical business processes. The clear advantages and benefits are of cost and customisations with features that can be easily enabled or disabled as per convenience.

Following have been seen as compelling business drivers that are making the SaaS delivery a viable alternative to traditional licensed based product or application delivery:

• Lower cost of ownership of Software
• Flexibility to change usage commitments as business circumstances change
• Economically appealing business cases
• Quicker roll outs
• Better return on investment (ROI)

Software-as-a-service is bringing about a fundamental shift in how Software is acquired, used, and paid for. Emerging SaaS models and offerings are taking the SaaS concept far beyond first-generation application functionality and deployment, and into mission-critical business operations for large and small firms.

Software as a service delivery has two major categories:

• Line-of-business services offered to enterprises and organizations of all sizes:

Line-of-business services are often large, customizable business solutions aimed at facilitating business processes such as finances, supply-chain management, and customer relations. These services are typically sold to customers on a subscription basis

• Consumer-oriented services offered to the general public:

Consumer-oriented services are sometimes sold on a subscription basis, but are often provided to consumers at no cost, and are supported by advertising

Be it business-to-business (B2B) or business-to-consumer (B2C) focus, e-Zest understands the complexities of developing and delivering Software as a Service (SaaS) in a multi-vendor environment.

Moving from offering on-premise to software as a service requires software vendors to shift their thinking. The three interrelated areas of SaaS consulting are:

• Business model consulting:

Selling SaaS is like pitching a new model of engagement it is something like selling mobile phone ring tones, or downloadable music-it should be possible for a customer to visit the website, subscribe to service, pay with a credit card, customize the service, and begin using it, all without human intervention on the part of the vendor. This doesn’t mean eliminating the more personal approach as may be needed for larger customers with more extensive needs but it is essentially ease of use.

Changing the business model could involve one or more of the following:
- Shifting the ‘ownership’ of the software from the internal teams to an external provider
- Reallocating responsibility for the technology infrastructure and management—that is, hardware and professional services – from the business to the provider
- Reducing the cost of providing software services, through specialization and economy of scale
- Targeting smaller businesses, by reducing the minimum cost at which software can be sold

Realizing the benefits of SaaS requires a shift in thinking on the part of both the provider and the the business. It’s up to the provider to help them make this shift.

e-Zest’s SaaS business consulting team can help you in devising innovative business models and educating customers in making business and delivery model shifts.

• SaaS application architecture consulting:

A well-designed SaaS application is scalable, secure, multi-renter-efficient, and configurable.
- Scalability: It means maximizing concurrency, and using application resources more efficiently
- Multi-renter: It is an architecture that maximizes the sharing of resources across renter, but that is still able to differentiate data belonging to different customers
- Configuration: SaaS application architecture requires ensuring that the task of configuring applications is simple and easy for the customers, without incurring extra development or operation costs for each configuration
- Security: The nature of SaaS makes security both a paramount concern for customers and a high priority for application architects. Along with application data security, managing authentication and authorization aspects are the key architecture drivers from SaaS application point of view

We understand these application architecture drivers and can help you in making critical architecture trade-off decisions that can have long term impact on technology and business scalability.Our experience in business model and architecture consulting architecting and deploying Software as a Service (SaaS) applications for its customers across the globe. Best practices identified by our expert architects have helped customers successfully architect and deploy robust service-oriented solutions.

You could refer to e-Zest’s case study section on the SaaS-based ERP System, where we have documented how e-Zest provided the business model and architecture consulting services along with application development and deployment services. For more information, write to us at info@e-zest.com to understand how our SaaS consulting and enablement services can add value to your business!