The software-as-a-service category is growing rapidly, providing more opportunities and reasons for project executives to consider these low-cost-of-entry, low-maintenance offerings for project administrative tasks such at time, expense and summary reports.
The concept of outsourcing services has been around for hundreds of years in some shape or form. All of us participate in this service delivery model each and every day. We pay the utility company to provide power, the phone company for communications, and the waste management company to collect our garbage. Typically, we pay a recurring, nominal fee for these services. In return, the service provider deals with the underlying complexities of delivering this service to us reliably.
This same service model is being applied across software products around the globe. Over the past couple of years, there has been an increasing emergence of software related products delivered over the Internet using this service model. The model is commonly referred to as Software as a Service (SaaS), On Demand Software, or Application Service Provider (ASP). There are SaaS providers offering low -cost voice communications (VoIP), email, accounting solutions, document management, CRM, billing, HR, time management, expense management, web/video conferencing, and many others.