Software as a Service (SaaS)

What is SaaS?

Software as a service (or SaaS) is a method of delivering software as a service through the Internet. Instead of installing and maintaining software, you simply access it through the Internet, liberating yourself from the complexities of software and device maintenance.

Web-based software, on-demand software, and hosted software are all terms used to describe SaaS applications. Whatever the moniker, SaaS apps are hosted on the servers of a SaaS provider. The provider handles application access, including security, availability, and performance.

What is the origin of SaaS?

John McCarthy, a notable computer scientist who received the Turing prize for his work in artificial intelligence (AI), notably stated in a 1961 speech to MIT students, “computation may someday be structured as a public utility.” In other words, cloud computing started as a shared resource of computing power.

While the concept has been around for a while, the web-based technology required to support SaaS only became available in the late 1990s. That’s when firms like Salesforce—founded explicitly to produce cloud software—began delivering classic enterprise solutions like customer relationship management (CRM) via a SaaS model.