Software as a Service (SaaS) Explained in 5 mins - YouTube

Unless you’ve been living under the rock the past  few years it is very likely you use Software as a  

Service, or SaaS, on a daily basis for business  and as a consumer. SaaS is one of the three main  

categories of cloud computing, Infrastructure as  a Service, or IaaS, and Platform as a Service,  

or PaaS. Out of the big 3 cloud computing models,  SaaS is the most popular and commonly used one,  

AND the great thing about it is you don’t have  to be a developer or an IT expert to use it!  

So, SaaS in a nutshell is a method of delivering  software and applications over the internet via a  

subscription model. This a game changer compared  to our traditional software model used prior to  

the emergence of cloud computing, where users  would have to manage, install, and upgrade  

software themselves on local servers or computers.  With SaaS you can simply provision a server for  

an instance in cloud, and in a couple of hours,  you’ll have your software or application ready for  

use. Some key examples would be the email client  you use such as GMail, the applications and tools  

you have on your computer, such as Microsoft  Office 365 or Adobe Creative Cloud, or even  

when you are jamming out to your favorite music  streaming service, these are all SaaS, providing  

productivity apps over the internet. SaaS is also  used in a wide variety of business operations  

today, such as communication and collaboration,  customer relationship management, billing, sales  

management, human resources management, financial  management, enterprise resourcing planning,  

you get the gist, the list goes on and on. So,  unlike our other cloud computing service models,  

SaaS is the very top of the IT stack and has the  highest level of abstraction. So, this means the  

cloud service provider will be providing and  maintaining all these layers for you in this  

stack. So, let's take a look what that might look  like and see how a user would typically consume a  

SaaS application. So I'm just going to go ahead  and just shift these other stacks over here and  

let's slide the SaaS deck right here. Okay. So,  our users would access a SaaS application within  

what we call a multi-tenant architecture, and by  tenant I mean user. So, you'd have multiple users  

all accessing the same pool of resources within  the stack. So it'd be the same hosted environment,  

same hosted servers where multiple users would  have their own dedicated space to securely store  

their data. There's a lot of benefits with this in  a SaaS application. So let's take a look at a few.  

So one you know right off the bat is it's much  more cost efficient compared to our other models  

because again, which is the overall theme of this  whole video, is cloud service providers would be  

maintaining and managing the application  for you. So, there's no IT overhead cost  

and a SaaS application is typically consumed on  a subscription-based model which is either on  

an annual basis or a monthly basis. And  that includes support typically whereas  

with our older traditional models, on-prem, you  would have a perpetual license where you'd have  

a pretty large up front cost and then you'd  have to pay for support on going separately.  

Two, scalability, right. So, you can horizontally  or vertically scale on demand because again that  

cloud service provider is going to be maintaining  everything for you. So if you need to add more  

databases, or you need more compute power they'll  take care of that for you on a has needed basis.  

Another benefit is you can access your  SaaS application anywhere which is a  

huge benefit right now especially if you  want to mobilize your workforce, right. So  

all you need is a web browser and internet  connectivity to be up and running with your  

SaaS application. There's no installation,  there's typically no plugins involved  

and you can no matter where you reside  geographically, you can always be up and running.  

Now I should say if you are looking for a SaaS  solution there are some instances where you do  

need to keep your data in the same location where  you reside. For instance, with Europe we have GDPR  

and by law you have to maintain your data  where you reside. So, there are going to be  

some instances like that, but for the most  part SaaS is a highly secure solution. And  

then last but not least, you always have a new  version, right. So, once again there's no need to  

update your licensing or update manually the new  version of your software because that's all taken  

care for you and it's automatically upgraded.  And this helps with a lot of wide range of  

issues typically if there's version control,  right. In the past you'd download software  

and then you might be operating with something  that's not compatible with a different version  

of that software. So, everyone's on the same  version of that software and you don't have to  

manually update and worry about patching and all  that junk, everything's taken care of for you. So,  

this is just a very quick overview of  Software as a Service. Thank you for joining.  

If you have questions, please drop us a line  below. If you want to see more videos like this  

in the future, please like and subscribe.  And don't forget you can grow your skills  

and earn a badge with IBM CloudLabs, which  are free, browser-based Kubernetes labs.