SaaS provides a pay-as-you-go solution for growing businesses

Yesterday’s post looked at one of the key advantages of Sofware-as-a-Service (SaaS): the ability to increase or decrease the number of monthly users and only pay for what you are using.

If your business is growing, SaaS offers additional benefits with respect to your IT budget and resources. First of all, adding users can be almost instantaneous within a reasonable range. Typically, you can add 10% of your current number of users, quickly and seamlessly.

Another benefit is the Time-Value-of Money justification. You can pay out a bunch of capital up front, or pay-as-you-go. These days, the pay-as-you-go model is drawing a following.

When it comes to handling a bigger jump, SaaS stills saves time and money, both short term and long term. Let’s say you want to increase the number of users in a call center from 100 to 200. You’re going to have to build the infrastructure to handle that, which provides plenty of time to plan for the anticipated growth with your SaaS provider. Once your new hardware is ready to go, your SaaS will be ready, too.

In addition, SaaS gets you out of the upgrade business. If you have 200 workstations running licensed software, you’re going to have to pay to upgrade that software every year or two – and commit significant IT resources to preparing for the upgrades, installing them, and making everything work. With SaaS, your provider implements upgrades to the software. You have immediate access to improvements – and you can still pay as you go.

Personally, I find myself getting a little more “SaaSy” each day as these solutions become more available, more flexible, and provide for more financially responsible solutions in today’s economic climate.

–Michael Haines

Michael Haines is Chief Information Officer for CXO Global Solutions.