Tech Talk
Software as a Service
In the last few years, Software as a Service (“SaaS”) has become a major enabler in the software world. This technology is particularly suited for Digital Signage: Michael Willems, EnQii's Chief Technology Officer, explains why.
Like all technologies, software goes through natural cycles. Originally, in the early 1960s all software used to be self-written, and would only run on users' own mainframes. Later, with the advent of the Personal Computer, the pendulum shifted to users running their own, commercially purchased, software. And finally, with the coming of the Internet came the opportunity to have others run your software for you. A few years ago, this used to be called ASP (an ASP is an “Application Service Provider”); it is now called SaaS (“Software as a Service”). SaaS is a model of software deployment where an application is hosted as a service provided to customers across the Internet. In other words, instead of installing an application on one or more PCs, you use a web browser and use the service across the Internet.
This model has been taking off all over the world. You may have noticed that Google web apps now provides word processing on the 'net. Salesforce.com famously provides sales force automation and CRM online. Google and Yahoo mail provide similar online benefits. And there are many more examples: even Microsoft is beginning to offer SaaS. As The Economist put it last month: “the importance of this shift from a monolithic product to services is hard to overstate”, and this has “...far-reaching implications for businesses and for society as a whole”. And because of its particular properties, the benefits of SaaS are particularly clear in Digital Signage.
So what are those benefits? They come in various areas, and are compelling.
Firstly, there is a large set of financial benefits. In SaaS, the Provider, not the user, worries about capital expenditure for the central infrastructure, which can be expensive. There is no need for the user to invest in banks of servers: the provider has taken care of that. Also, there is no need to employ IT people just to keep the service running: another saving. Finally, you save on support: you use only the support you need, and only when you need it, and no earlier. Thus, a SaaS solution has a lower Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) than a self-administered solution.
Second, there are very important technical benefits. You can be assured that you can scale up from one to ten to 10,000 players when you need, and without fuss. Security, an important concern in a Digital Signage network, is maintained by the vendor, which takes a worry off your mind too. Also, you do not need to install an application on many machines: a web browser is all you need. You become platform independent: Mac or PC: either will do. When something is not working, you can be sure it gets fixed quickly. Backups, often a forgotten necessity, are not your worry, either. Nor do you need to worry about updates and upgrades: with a SaaS solution, you always have the latest version.
Finally, SaaS provides a great degree of risk reduction. You do not spend until you need to. You avoid large Capex up front. You do not employ people until you have to. The reliability inherent in having a professional organization do this for multiple users helps ensure that everything works. And importantly, you concentrate on your business, not on IT.
Thus, SaaS is the logical “next step”. Software used to be written for one user: commercial software was a way to share development cost and risk. SaaS does the same for running software. We no longer need to have our own IT people for everything all the time: we share the cost and risk, and thus benefit from economies of scale and from specialization.
These benefits are clearly compelling, and definitely so in Digital Signage, where you have multiple locations and players. So are they always the way to go? While indeed it is usually the best way to run a Digital Signage network, and it is always the best way to start, there has to be a way to run your own should you want to. A good SaaS vendor allows this, should you wish to. This is both a way to reduce risk and a way to ensure that should your circumstances change (e.g. you employ a large IT staff, or your IT cost is extraordinarily low), your software can change with it. Make sure, therefore, that a SaaS vendor offers a path to “running your own”, should you ever need it. You probably never will – but the option “just in case” is an important one.
SaaS has already enabled many companies to run Digital Signage networks where otherwise the cost, risk or technical complexity would have been prohibitive. And all the trends are favourable: the Internet is getting more ubiquitous and bandwidth is getting greater and cheaper. One day we will look back and wonder: did we really run all our own software on our own servers, back then? The Economist – and EnQii - will have been proven right, and we will wonder how we ever lived without SaaS.