Every field has its own vernacular and cloud-based software is no exception. In order to communicate effectively with software vendors and your IT team, you’ll need to know what SaaS is.

Put simply, SaaS stands for Software as a Service. The old model of using software entailed selling a particular version of a piece of software to customers, and then introducing new features in later versions. Customers owning a previous version would have to purchase an upgrade when the new version became available and to get the latest and greatest features, usually a year or two later.

The problem is that it left many customers using old software, which had to continue to be patched and paid attention to by IT staff. Furthermore, as the software matured, it created a fragmented landscape. Some customers remained on the earliest versions, others on the latest versions, and yet other users somewhere in the middle.

Software as a Service made it possible for all customers to be on one version – the latest version – with the newest features and the most up to date bug fixes and security patches.

That is one of the reasons why EHSCloud has followed the Software as a Service model. Doing so has enabled the company to focus its efforts on keeping one version of the software up to date. By making it affordable, it also ensured that all its customers can enjoy the newest features as they are deployed.

With SaaS, instead of owning a license to the software, users consume its usage like they would a utility service. SaaS also made volume licensing considerably less cumbersome, and more accessible to businesses, particularly to those SMEs that may not have had large IT budgets.

One of the key benefits of Software as a Service is that companies can now pay for what they need just for the time they need it. If a large project requires giving more employees access for one or two months, businesses can pay a bit more to increase their consumption. Once the project is complete, they simply dial down the number of users, and reduce how much they pay monthly.

The beauty of SaaS models is that users see a reduced time to benefit from the software. This is critical in today’s business landscape, as organisations need to respond to market changes more agilely, as well as adapt their strategy and be able deliver value to their customers more quickly.

There is little wonder then that Microsoft, Adobe and Google, to name a few major vendors, have adopted SaaS wholeheartedly with their Microsoft 365, Creative Cloud Google and Workspace offerings respectively.

SaaS is not just a better way of delivering software for developers and customers alike, it is quickly becoming the only way – and for good reason.