The SaaS (Software-as-a-Service) or Software as a Service model

Traditionally, the most common method of acquiring software has been through licensing. It mainly consists in that one, as a customer, must install the software on their own computer or on a network, and optionally a maintenance contract is offered to receive updates to the software or technical support.

In the traditional model, customers are responsible for operating system compatibility with software, update installation, compliance with license agreements, and so on.

Also read this related article: The PaaS model (Platform-as-a-Service or Platform as a Service)

In a Software as a Service or SaaS model, the customer does not buy the software, but rather rents/rents it in a subscription model. In some cases, the service is free if the use of the service is minimal. Typically, the user accesses the software over the Internet.

Benefits of the SaaS model
SaaS allows users to disengage from hosting and managing the software.
SaaS allows vendors to control and limit the use of software, prohibits unauthorized copying and distribution, and makes it easy to control all derivative versions of their software.
SaaS typically uses the web as infrastructure so that the end-user can access the software through a web browser.
SaaS does not require specialized hardware.

The SaaS model is a multi-user architecture model, which means that infrastructure is shared among many clients, but the service is unique for each client.

The multi-user architecture maximizes the sharing of resources between users but is still able to confidently differentiate the data that belongs to each user. For example, when a user in a company accesses customer information through the use of a SaaS CRM (Customer Relationship Management), the contact list of a user is completely isolated from the list of users of another user in the same system.

SaaS is the latest trend in Software models, it is estimated that by 2017 this model will be valued at 60 billion dollars, and it is precisely this model that has led companies to grow exponentially in a relatively short time