What is software as a service (SaaS)?
The cloud computing model that makes it efficient for companies to deliver software and easy for consumers to use software.
From a network that spans the globe to innovative solutions that transform organizations, Google Cloud has SaaS built into its DNA.
Google Cloud enables you to build better SaaS products, scale efficiently, and ultimately grow your business. Learn more about SaaS transformation.
SaaS defined
SaaS stands for software as a service. It is a model in which the software is centrally hosted and accessed by the user via a web browser using the internet.
In a SaaS model, the software provider owns and maintains the software and the customer does not need to install any software on their own computer. Typically, in this model the software is licensed on a subscription basis.
SaaS is the new identity card of any company that is pursuing their digital journey.
SaaS is how companies generate revenue, pivot their product to customer demand, optimize existing apps, innovate, and go to market quickly to win against competition. When we talk to customers, SaaS is a business conversation with emphasis on company growth, monetization aspects, and business models, onboarding customers faster to generate revenue and possibilities around cross-pillar and multi-product co-innovation. Google Cloud can partner with enterprises, share our best practices, and co-innovate with our customers for mutual growth and success.
In a SaaS business model, the software provider owns and maintains the software. The customer does not need to install any software on their own computer. Needless to mention, the SaaS business model is quite different from a managed service model. For a recurring fee or subscription, the end user does not need to worry about the provisioning, management, and maintenance of the infrastructure, platform, and application. This is usually done through a central cloud-based system.
Some interesting SaaS use cases that we explored as part of customer interactions, and how we helped them are listed below.
- Customers with existing apps that need SaaS multi-tenancy: Modernize and secure applications
- Customers that onboarded multiple tenants, but need to scale business quicker: Establish SaaS operations, and tenant business intelligence
- Customers/startups that onboarded a few tenants, and need to scale globally: Enable agility and global expansion
- Customers/startups that need to onboard free-tier tenants, and convert them to paid tier quickly: Provide a simple and efficient way to support free-tier customers
- Customers that want cost optimization as they onboard new tenants: Assess and streamline apps/operations and optimize costs, enable usage-based pricing where applicable
- Customers that need GDPR, data residency, and compliance requirements for their tenants: Bespoke approach to handle multiple types of tenants (SaaS, customer hosted, on-prem, multicloud) in a consistent way
Why should you care about SaaS?
There has been a fundamental shift in how users and enterprises consume software.
- Consumers and enterprises are demanding free trials
- Customers are exploring product fit for applications and are making self-service business decisions in days (not months or years) to start leveraging very complex business-critical apps
- Expectations that the new digital enterprise is expected to offer these services readily, and have the resilience to onboard new customers seamlessly, scale geographically as needed, convert them to paid/subscribed customers, and offer them full transparency with reporting, observability, and chargeback from day 1
- Customers need to future-proof their products and modernize their product architecture quickly and change their business model to a subscription offering (yes, licenses are a thing of the past!)
Software vendors/ISVs need to embrace these tenets to onboard net-new line of customers and to enable net-new revenue channels.
Google Cloud has a structured approach to help customers who are in their SaaS journey both to model their business and facilitate new revenue streams, and to model their architecture by elevating their existing offerings and making them ready for SaaS consumers.
SaaS journey with Google Cloud
SaaS Accelerator provides you with access to Google's expertise in open source, DevOps, and SRE, allowing you to modernize your apps/data, plan for multi-tenant onboarding, full security, funding to kick-start your SaaS pilot, and co-innovation with Google.
* Grow business, onboard customers/suppliers faster
* Modernize apps, minimize ops, eliminate dependencies
* Faster time to market, build differentiated offerings
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Related products and services
Google Cloud can help you meet SaaS requirements without changes to your application—by bringing in isolation at the infrastructure layer at the project level. Industry-leading services such as Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE) can enable efficient SaaS operations for effective scalability and maintenance.
