Monday, November 3, 2008

What is SaaS?

SaaS (Software as a Service) is an application hosted on a remote server and accessed through the Internet.

A simple and concrete example of SaaS are the "free" email (also called web-based email) systems offered on the Internet such as Microsoft Hotmail, G-mail and Yahoo Mail. Each program meets the basic criteria of an SaaS application: a vendor (Microsoft, Google or Yahoo) hosts all of the programs, logic and data in a central location and provides end users access to this data and the software which is run and used over the world-wide web.

This "simple" application architecture can then be applied to a wide range of software applications for use by either business enterprises or individual end-users.

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