Companies and organisations come in all shapes and sizes, from ranging home-office one man bands to global enterprises with many thousands of employees. Business software also tends to vary greatly according to the scale of the organisation it might be serving. Global enterprises will encompass a range of systems and processes which will be either beyond the scale or requirements of a small business. Through the involvement of enterprise software companies such as Oracle, and backed up by expert application support services, applications have been developed that help companies run such processes.
Whatever the system or process, ranging from HR, to accounting, customer services, or production management, there will be enterprise software available to help get the job done; as well as a corresponding enterprise application support service.
Whilst enterprise application software has been refined and developed over the past three decades so has the process by which it is delivered to the end user. Through the 1980s and 1990s, companies had in-house IT teams who would receive the relevant software, or update, on disk. This ‘disk in the post’ method of delivering software ultimately became unsustainable, and was gradually replaced by ASP, or Application service providers. ASPs delivered functional software on-demand over the internet in a ground-breaking way.
ASP has now matured in to ‘software as a service’. Fully-fledged, powerful applications, such as Oracle Financials, are available through the cloud to clients from a remote provider on a subscription basis. No specialist software needs to be installed at the client end, since the packages are accessible entirely through a web browser.
The key benefits to software as a service are as follows.
Reduced costs up-front: No need to buy expensive proprietary equipment to run the software, or hire extra staff for a rollout.
Predictable continuing costs: Since the software is provided on a subscription basis, monthly costs will be agreed and known in advance by all parties. This makes planning and budgeting considerably more straightforward.
Licensing all dealt with: There are no licensing issues to deal with, since a company’s use of the software will all be accounted for in the subscription cost. This is a big plus, especially when it comes to organisations with a fluid population of users spread over diverse locations.
Focused, dedicated support: Saas application services will often include application support as part of any agreement. The support technicians will be focused completely on the given software package, familiar with any quirks, since they deal with it every day. This contrasts with in-house support staff, who have to take more of a versatile approach, and may, through no fault of their own, miss crucial details with a particular piece of enterprise software.
Here at Interoute Application Management, we provide just such dedicated application support for a rich variety of Software as a service products. Our specialists have the time, and required experience, to get to grips with a product in such a way that our clients receive a stellar service.
