In today’s world of business there is only one reality; raise profits by reducing overhead. To reach this goal businesses today are looking for new approaches for lowering overhead and raising profits. Introducing a new system can go a long way towards this goal, but is there a way to go even farther to reduce a new system’s overhead? The answer lies with a different system delivery mechanism called Software-as-a-Service, or SaaS. Reported data supports a decision to move all non core competency systems into a SaaS model to save money in the long term. This data also shows that there is no “break even” point to running a system in-house; which has always been one of the main reasons for internally hosting a system. Cost savings for SaaS system can start to be realized from the moment implementation begins. No longer does a system have to be up and running for a period of time before savings begin; another advantage to moving to a SaaS delivery model. The great thing about a SaaS model is that savings continue to grow even during maintenance because many of the traditional maintenance costs are shifted from the business to the SaaS vendor. The growth in the development of SaaS type systems is also helping businesses to have more options in using a SaaS solution for internal processes. These SaaS systems relieve the business of many different liabilities and give the business many ways to improve the overall cost model for a useful system. If a proper SaaS model system can be found, a business can benefit greatly from using the SaaS system. Astute business leaders are benefiting from moving some internal hosted software systems to SaaS type systems and reaping the rewards of higher profits.

In today’s business climate to lower overhead and raise profits, it has become paramount for a business to find better and cheaper ways to do business. This can be a challenge when an existing software system is delivering good operational benefits, but the cost of maintenance of the system keeps going up year after year. Over the past few years software vendors have been trying to find a way for their customer base to benefit from the high value of their system, but at a lower annual cost for the customer.

A software vendor is constantly faced with the issue of how to continue to deliver a product of value and still keep the customer happy and wanting more so that the customer will renew the license for the system another year. Having a top quality system may not be enough to encourage license renewal alone; there has to be some sort of bottom line business value for the system. The problem is that this value may contain variables outside the control of the software vendor, yet these variables can have a significant impact on the decision of renewing the license. How these variables are handled can be a game changer for both the software vendor and for the customer.

In recent years software companies have been trying to meet these demands in new ways. One of the more successful methods being used to meet these issues head on is delivering their system using the Software-As-A-Service (SaaS) model. The term Software-As-A-Service was first introduced in 2000/2001, to mean a low-cost way for business to obtain the same benefits of commercially licensed, internally operated software, but without the associated complexity and high initial cost. (Divekar) However the current use has become more than this restrictive view of software delivery; today there are many applications being accessed through the Internet using a simple Web Browser. Using this “thin” client access a business can become more flexible in hardware configuration as well as now being able to be location independent work environment. These advantages are also giving businesses a chance to hire even better candidates than before mostly due to a relaxing of geographical constraints that locked businesses into physical area-specific hiring practices. With the ability to access applications and data from anywhere in the world businesses are finding new and innovative ways to do business and work with their customer base.

In the following sections of this paper different areas will be looked at on how a SaaS model affects the business operations. By the end of this exploration of the SaaS model a compelling case will be presented of the business value for a SaaS model for most non-core competence software systems in a business.

There are two major areas of concerns when cost containment of a software system. The first is the initial cost of the system, and the second is the continuous cost of the system; or system maintenance. When trying to find the Total Cost of Ownership, TCO, of a system, these are the factors that have the most influence on correctly calculating this value. If any variable is missed, or miscalculated, then the TCO value will be incorrect.

In a traditional software system it is not uncommon to have to purchase hardware and find rack space for the hardware even before the system can be installed. This includes ordering, and paying for, new hardware, finding open rack space to mount the system in, connect the system to the network, and then install and update the operating system. After this, the production system software can be ready to install. This process can take weeks or months to complete and the costs of these activities may include, but are not limited to:

To get to this point of the implementation the costs could be in the thousands, or tens of thousands of dollars and this is only the very beginning stage of the implementation. Training users on the system now becomes one of the next largest costs to incur. The software vendor may include some training as part of the system, but this tends to be for a smaller group of the organization. It will be up to this small group to train and maintain training for the rest of the organization for the life of the system.

Once the hardware and software are in place, the next step is to test for Payment Card Industry (PCI) compliance. This is a process can be rather in depth and both expensive and time consuming. An auditor will have to be hired to verify the network, system configuration, and users will have to be trained in PCI compliance issues. Any noncompliance issues found has to be addressed before an auditor can give any sort of compliance certification. For a business to be successful with this process it must also have internal expertise in PCI as well. A Gartner study stated that outsourced PCI data storage, if done right, is more economical and secure than attempting to do things internally. (Rothke) In short is a best practice to outsource PCI data storage when possible. One of the main reasons for this is that a common mistake is to underestimating the amount of time and money and effort that is required to achieve PCI compliance in data storage. Going to a vendor where this data storage is more of a core competency allows a business to reduce their risk when working outside their core competence.

Assuming that all basic startup issues are now under control the next area to address is who owns the system. Although the department, or group, that uses the system may have had the most input in defining system requirements and finding the vendor, once the system has been moved in house the IT team will take ownership of the system regardless of domain expertise and knowledge. The reason for this is rather simple; the IT team is responsible for all system and network backups, security, reliability, scalability, and availability. These responsibilities force the IT team into a guardianship role since it is the IT team that must maintain the day to day operations that is required of a running system. Bringing in a new system will require scheduling time and resources from the IT team to help bring the system online, which may be harder to do if the IT team is strapped for resources. Once the IT team agrees to install a new system the IT team will naturally assume they own and control the end to end delivery of the system. (SaaS Executive Council) As the number of in house systems being maintained by the IT team grow, so does the amount of time needed to maintain all these systems. The risk with this situation is that an IT team may become understaffed and over work; becoming a team that has little time for “non-essential” work on the work schedule. In some cases there can be major delays of software updates to existing systems, which can lead to possible security issues to the system being maintained and to the business. This productivity bottleneck can lead to artificially higher costs due to elongated timelines for projects.

Once all these challenges have been completed then the ongoing upkeep of the system must be started. In general there is a short period of time after the initial release that problems will be seen and have to be addressed, but after a short period of time these issues are reduced to almost none. At this point the system has stabilized and the user base, overall, understands how to use the system so there seem to be few problems. As long as normal system maintenance (backups, updates, etc.) are being done the system tends to fall into background with little known upkeep. But at some point in time the system will disclose a defect that hinders business operations. It is at this time that the IT team will be called in to update, or patch, the existing system. If all goes well this should happen rarely, but there are no guarantees. None the less this is work that must be done no matter how busy, or overloaded, the IT team is. This unexpected work is part of the system maintenance that is not always kept track of, but it does add to the maintenance cost of the system.

When it comes to the overall maintenance costs of a system most businesses have an idea of what a system costs to continue to use. They will calculate the cost of hardware in its life cycle, they will calculate the cost of renewing the software licenses (somewhere in the range of 18 to 24 percent of the cost of the license) (Kingstone), and they will calculate the cost of system backup and down time due to these backups. Yet many businesses will over look the cost of personnel that are doing these actives. (SaaS Executive Council) This mistake can lead to a budget overrun that is not seen until late in the fiscal year. One of the main reasons this cost may lead to a budget overrun is due to the fact that the expense can be rather high. Two different reports show that the personnel cost for these activates can be as much as 2.5 to 7.5 times higher than the cost of the software as well as be as much as 75% of the total IT budget. (SaaS Executive Council, Divekar) It should be noted that these are tangible recurring costs that occur all the time and continue to add up year after year.

Every system also includes intangible costs as well. These intangible costs include, but are not limited to, reliability and availability, interoperability, extensibility, security, and scalability. (SaaS Executive Council) As it can be seen by this list it is very hard to put exact values to these areas, because these values are not exact and that makes calculating them somewhat unreliable. The hidden problem with these types of intangible costs is that these are costs that do affect the overall maintenance cost, or TCO, an existing system even if numbers are hard to place on them.

As software vendors have seen these problems growing, the concern has been how to solve these issues and still add value for the customer at a lower cost; yet allow the software vendor to be profitable enough to stay in business. One of the more popular ways to address this concern has been to convert systems into a service base type system. In other words, make the system accessible without having to host it on the local network with local resources taking full responsibility for the daily operation of the system. The common term for this approach is Software-As-A-Service, or SaaS.

Today there are many SaaS systems being used on a daily basis. If fact many users will not even realize they are using a SaaS system because they have become so transparent to the on-line life. Any user that has used Amazon, Netflix, Rhapsody, Pandora, Ebay, or even ITunes has used a SaaS system and the odds are they did not even know it was a SaaS system. One of the major characteristics of a SaaS system that it is a subscription based access system. Access can be paid for each month, for a defined period of time, or for a single use. These systems allow users to have access for the time they want and to cancel when they are done using the service.

This system delivery model has created a win / win environment for both the customer and for the software vendor. The customer no longer needs high level IT resources to manage a system, and the software vendor has a lower support costs. (Herbert & Erickson) Some of the largest support costs come from environmental effects on a system. These types of issues are hard to diagnose since they only manifest themselves on the customer system, which the vendor may (or may not) have direct access to. It should be noted that the longer an issue takes to resolve, the more strain is placed on the customer / vendor relationship. This strain could lead to lost of a useable system for the customer and loss of revenue for the vendor, both of which should be avoided for the best interest of both the customer and vendor.

A software vendor who has control of the production system will naturally have the ability to setup a new customer faster than a business that needs to buy, or locate, hardware to run the system on. This translates into a shorter timeline for the implementation and start of use of a new system. Installation and setup of an internal system can take weeks, or months, whereas the SaaS vendor can setup the system in a matter days, weeks, even on the spot. This shorter time line is due to the expertise that the vendor has with their system as well the vendor will already have a preconfigured system ready to deploy for faster startup. (Herbert & Erickson) Not only will money be saved in the setup due to less resources and less time, but startup cost tend to be reduced down to nothing more than just the cost to migrate data and integrate the system into the existing business, which is mostly labor oriented costs. This allows the IT budget to stretch much further. (Divekar) It cannot be overlooked that another advantage a SaaS vendor brings to the table is a reduced startup cost compared to the in house hosted system. It has been reported that the SaaS vendor’s startup costs can be between .5X to 4X lower that than of the in-house startup costs. (Herbert & Erickson) Once again the SaaS solution can relieve pressures on an already strained IT budget.

So what does this shorter implementation timeline mean to a business today? It can mean life. It is rather obvious that the pace of business change is much faster today than say 50 years ago, but how fast it that change? Faisal Hoque put it in very clear terms:

What these numbers make clear is that a business must be able to adapt to change quickly. In many cases standing up a new system, for business operation, can have a direct impact on the time-to-market delivery of a product, or service. This delivery has a direct impact on the business both in the short term as well as the long term. Given that a vendor, using a SaaS model for their system design, has the ability to standup a new installation so much faster than an internal installation, it may very well benefit a business to use the SaaS system instead of trying to bring the system in-house. For businesses that have IT resource constraints a hosted solution will minimize ongoing maintenance requirements and help shorten the time-to-market delivery. (Kingstone)

It is one thing to have a short timeline to get a new system installed and ready to use, but what happens after the system is ready to be used? If the system is not quickly adopted by the user community, the short implementation process will have no benefit. In other words, a reluctant user community could lose any business advantage a system could bring. One study showed that a SaaS system brings a faster adoption from the user community because these SaaS system tend to have an interface that the user is somewhat familiar with unlike custom locally hosted system. (Herbert & Erickson)

A SaaS system does not only have major startup advantages, its best value is realized in its maintenance cost savings. Maintenance costs include tasks such as system backups, updates for both the system (Operating System, Database, Antivirus, etc.) and the application. Due to risk management issues these updates should be completed on test systems and thoroughly checked out before deploying these changes to production systems so not to compromise business operations. If the system is hosted in-house this would require duplicate equipment of production hardware, and software, for a QA test environment. This duplication of hardware, and software, can be rather expensive so some businesses decide to use either use different hardware (many times older decommissioned hardware), or no hardware (just deploy without testing). Both these options open the business to higher risks of not finding issues before compromising business operations. If this risk is never encountered this decision can save a large sum of money, but if this risk is encountered only once it could cost more that what a test environment would have cost in the first place.

Another issue that may arise, when it comes to updates, is the applying of the update in a timely fashion. If the internal IT team is heavily taxed it may be a long period of time from when an update is received to when the update is tested and applied to the production system. This can open the door for a business to have other issues such as bad data or even system compromise. When using a SaaS system these issues are nonexistent because the SaaS vendor has the responsibility for ensuring these updates are completed and there are no side effects with the running system. At this point all the update risks and costs are relocated from the customer to the vendor which has the expertise to handle these risks better. (Herbert & Erickson)

When a system is hosted in-house the customer will pay an annual cost to relicense the system each year this cost is called a maintenance fee. Unlike the original license fee, which is paid one time only (at the time you receive the software), a maintenance fee is reoccurring each year. The reason for this maintenance fee is to allow the system to be updated. This allows the customer to receive the latest version of the software so that the system can be updated with all the newest features that have been added as well as to ensure that any security updates are received. In general this fee is based on a percentage of the original cost of the software system. In the past this percentage was anywhere from 15% to about 20%. Today most of these fees are getting closer to 25%. Due to the higher cost of maintenance, for a software vendor, many vendors are finding ways to update existing, lower percentage contracts, with new high percentage contracts. The vendor will argue that this new higher percentage contract will bring more benefits (Weier), when in all reality it is no different than the existing contract that the customer already has, it just allows the vendor to offset more of their expense. When all maintenance costs are taken into account reports have shown that the total recurring costs of a SaaS system can be reduced to one fifth of the recurring costs of an in-house hosted system. (Herbert & Erickson)

Maintenance costs should not be looked at without thinking about the concept of Total Cost of Ownership, or TCO. This is the cost of the system looking at all aspects of ownership from the beginning purchase all the way to maintenance, and upkeep costs for a certain period of time (for example five years). This helps allow for the calculation of the Return on Investment, or ROI, that can be expected for a given period of time. Over the years there have been many debates about how to accurately calculate the TCO of a software system and most of the time the concern is that the problem of accurate calculations can only truly be done within the scope of a particular business environment. However, general views of trends in overall system maintenance can go a long way in looking at the overall TCO picture across many different business domains. Using a study that focuses on a Site-based vs. Hosted CRM system (Kingstone), there are some common high level comparisons that give an idea, across software systems in general, as to which delivery has a better TCO. These areas can be broken down into the following chart, and the study shows that there are more advantages to a SaaS model over the internally hosted and maintained system by 4 to 1 margin.

At this point a question should be asked: How can SaaS systems deliver the same value as a hosted system but at such a low cost. As obvious as the question is, the answer might not be as obvious. A SaaS system delivers its value to a business though economies of scale. A SaaS vendor can deliver a lower cost product by having higher volume. Instead of a system having a single customer on it, a SaaS system will have multiple customers on the system. This allows the vendor to deliver high value at a low cost because the vendor needs only one set of hardware to handle multiple customers at a time. (SaaS Executive Council, Chong & Carraro) Of course the hardware to handle this amount of traffic will be much larger than any single customer would have if they hosted the system in-house, but the SaaS vendor has a compelling business case to invest in this type of hardware where as a single customer cannot make that same business case. It should also be noted that in many cases the SaaS vendor’s system response times will be faster than an in house system. This is due in part to the SaaS vendor having higher end hardware and network throughput, whereas a single customer site will not have this higher end hardware and network throughput. This also leads to a better user experience and adoption which is an intangible benefit to the SaaS system.

In the past one of the major business arguments for hosting and maintaining a system internally has been that over a period of time an internally hosted system will achieve a break-even point where as a SaaS system cannot achieve a break-even point. If a business case can be proven on this fact, then there is no reason to even use a SaaS model system. As two different analysis of an IDC report show, this elusive “break-even” point is never realized because of a common mistake of miscalculation of personnel cost in deploying, running and maintaining traditional software system. When this miscalculation is corrected the break-even point evaporates. (Divekar, SaaS Executive Council) The following graph, from this IDC report, clearly supports these facts that when the miscalculations are removed there is no break-even point to the internal system.

In general a SaaS model business will be more customer focus than that of a traditional in-house hosted software model. This is due to the fact that SaaS systems are subscription based. No longer can a software vendor assume that a customer will pay in advance for use of a system, then benefit if the customer leaves before the maintenance contract is complete. If a customer becomes unhappy, or the system fails to perform as expected, the customer can leave now and the revenue stream is affected immediately for the software vendor. This puts a different pressure on a vendor than in a traditional software sale. In a traditional software sale, a salesman can work for a long period of time developing a relationship with a perspective customer to get the perspective customer to “buy” the system. This relationship between the two businesses can be used to overcome many hard times after the sale is closed. In the SaaS world, customers come to a SaaS vendor, in most cases, because a particular system is required for business operations and there is little or no pre-sales contact, nor is there any post-sales contact as well. This leaves the SaaS vendor without the normal relationship to lean on if there is an issue with a customer using the system. The SaaS vendor needs to diligently work with the customer to overcome any issues that the customer may experience without relying on a relationship experience to help smooth over complex issues. This now adds a new pressure for the SaaS vendor to be more concerned with keeping existing customers much more than focusing on getting new customers. (Sehlhorst) Each and every customer has much more influence than any customer has in a traditional software sale. This turns out to be a real game changer for the customer.

Given the customer has more influence than ever before on software systems configuration and behavior what does this mean for the future of SaaS systems? As Anand Divekar describes in his 2007 paper, the worldwide SaaS market reached $6.3 billion in 2007 and is forecast to grow to $19.3 billion by end of 2011. A 2012 Gartner report shows that the SaaS market will grow to $14.5 billion by end of year with a growth of about $22.1 billion by 2015. (Kanaracus) What these numbers show is that there is rapid growth in the SaaS area, even though speculation has been higher, the actual numbers are not too far off, but rapid growth is still continuing. Can it be stated this growth is due to better customer input over system configuration and behavior? There is no way of knowing for sure, but it is most likely safe to say this growth is due to lower costs and better user experiences; without these factors it is hard to explain this high level of growth.

A SaaS system also allows customers more independent control over the system they are using. With little pre and post sales communication, customers have to be more independent with a system. One way this independence can be achieved is by giving customers more control over the application’s configuration without interfacing with the vendor as much. (Chong & Carraro) This places more requirements on the system design to be configured by users rather than by the vendor, or by a professional support services group. Once again lower TCO of the system by making the system interface simple enough for users to configure, yet powerful enough to allow high levels of productivity. It is not uncommon for SaaS systems to give delegated administration control to customers on their own user account creation and maintenance. (Chong & Carraro)

To this point it is clear that there are a lot of benefits to a SaaS model for a customer. Some of the benefits include lower overall cost, better scalability and reliability, as well as an offset of some liability to the software vendor. These benefits add to up large savings from the customer side, but what about the vendor side? On the vendor side it has been seen that the vendor can lose some of their traditional income (no maintenance fees), incur higher hardware costs, assume the costs for the burden of daily operations, forced to lower costs due to increase competition, and have lower support costs. It sounds like a vendor is only in a position to lose money from a SaaS model, how does the vendor benefit? How is a customer to view the long term viability of a vendor when it looks like the vendor has no real way to make a large enough profit to stay in business for the customer’s long term needs? The answer is in the Long Tail.

In 2004 Chris Anderson introduced a statistical concept called “long-tailed distributions” into a useful business model called The Long Tail. (Anderson) In a statistical sense, it is called a long tail because the tail of the curve is very long compared to the head of the curve. Using a picture of what this curve looks like Anderson shows how there is a very large market outside the mainstream “fat end” of the curve that most businesses focus on.

The problem with this mainstream market is that it has been defined by the tyranny of locality; meaning that this market has been driven mostly by customers in a very geographically confined area and products that can fit only on a limited amount of shelf space of the local business. This geographically confined market has produced an economy of scarcity; in short goods and customers are connected only because they are close to each other and can sell in short time periods. With the growth of the Internet this economy of scarcity (geographically confined customers and goods) is quickly being replaced with an economy of online retail (a market of niches and no bounds).

There are two major points that are shown in the Long Tail model that allow great benefit to the customer and software vendor alike. The first benefit is that there are now no geographical boundaries for doing business. No longer must a customer go to a local physical location to buy goods. The customer can now shop many different places at one time looking for the best deal, and many businesses can now offer items that would other wise spend longs periods of time on the shelf not selling and costing money for the shelf space. This becomes a win / win situation for both the customer and business. The second benefit is lower prices through more competition. If geographic constraints are removed, then a business’s overhead can be reduced because there is no shelf space to drive up overhead costs, couple this with more competition and consumer prices will drop.

But how can lower prices and more competition be beneficial to a business? The answer is in the Long Tail. Even though Anderson focuses on the entertainment industry, there are things that can be learned from his observations. The Long Tail shows when priced affordably (even cheaply) and made accessible to all market segments, including geographically remote niche markets, the overall Long Tail market size rivals the size of traditional market. (Divekar) If a larger market exists to tap into, then the business can afford to have lower prices and allow volume to lift the overall profit margin. Another way to look at it is when you lower prices, people tend to buy more. (Anderson)

Given that a SaaS system has a higher user adoption rate, because of an already familiar user interface, a SaaS vendor is forced to follow non written standards for their user interface that tend to allow a wide variety of user configurable options. Not only does this lead to a more configurable interface, but allows each user to develop their own look and feel, more or less, allowing each user be treated as an individual. This goes directly against the current mass-market approach where, for the most part, one size fits all. (Anderson) In most cases there is nothing more irritating to a user that to have to spend time with technical support trying to figure out how to do something with a system. In many in-house hosted systems, a software vendor may not always make the interface the most intuitive for the user. A successful on-line system will guide a user through a work flow process seamlessly, intuitively and without human intervention. To put into marketing terms, selling a SaaS system is like selling mobile phone ringtones, or downloadable music: it should be possible for a customer to visit your website, subscribe to your service, pay with a credit card, customize the service, and begin to using the site, all without human intervention on part of the vendor. (Chong & Carraro)

When reviewing and studying the Long Tail and how it affects successful on-line businesses one simple fact starts to become very apparent; on-line business is about aggregating the Long Tail in one way or another. This fact is seen when looking at Netflix, Amazon, and the commercial music services that not only use, but need, both ends of the curve. (Anderson)

As software vendors, at times, have traditionally been focus on other issues, and not the customer concerns. A SaaS system has moved the vendor’s focus back to a customer centric view. This has allowed software vendors to produce high quality, high functioning systems which have in turn allowed a lower cost solution than an internally hosted and maintained system for a customer. This focus has also allowed the software vendor to move from an annual maintenance renewal goal mindset into a customer first everyday mindset. Not only do these systems add benefits from a business operational view but these changes also give an added benefit of allowing businesses to hire remote, more highly qualified staff. The remote access also allows for the use of a thin client for system access. No longer is a business required a desktop, or laptop, to do business. Devices like pads and phones can now be used for everyday work, thus dropping the overall cost of systems and system maintenance.

In two of the major expense areas of in-house hosting, initial cost and maintenance cost, a SaaS system shows many benefits. When startup cost for an in-house hosted system can be in the thousands, or tens of thousands, of dollars, the SaaS startup can save at least half the startup cost, or more. Along with the reduce expense and maintenance cost for daily operations (backup, updates, antivirus, etc) training costs are reduced as well. If a business needs to meet PCI compliancy the overall compliancy costs are also reduced because the majority of the PCI compliance is absorbed by the SaaS vendor not the customer. Studies have shown that this outsourcing of PCI data storage has is more economical and secure; again benefiting the customer. And a SaaS vendor is capable of bringing a new customer on line in days, weeks, or hours which allow customers to start to use a new system much faster than in-house hosted system can do.

A SaaS system does not run into the strapped IT team resource issues where only “essential” work takes priority. A SaaS vendor ensures that all system maintenance is completed and working with no required resources from the customer and is done in a timely matter. This pushes responsibility to the vendor away from the customer. The customer is now free from artificial productivity bottlenecks due to system maintenance and upkeep.

A SaaS system tends to lead to a faster user adoption rate because, in most cases, the interface looks very much like other SaaS system a user has access to even though the user many not recognize the system as a SaaS system. With the fast pace change of business today all of these factors help to improve time to market of systems, or services that may give a business the competitive edge needed to survive.

It is clear that there is no real breakeven point when it comes to in-house hosted system, so the overall lower costs gives SaaS systems a very good long term TCO. However the lower cost and competitive nature of a Saas system does not mean the SaaS vendor is at risk of going out of business. Using the Long Tail model, the SaaS vendor has a much larger market that allows for higher volume and lower prices to keep the SaaS vendor profitable. This allows the vendor to stay around so that a customer does not have to worry about getting a new system just to see the vendor go under and lose a system that is helping fuel a competitive edge. In short, a SaaS model gives a customer a way to save money and a vendor to make more. A true win / win situation for both the customer and software vendor.

Anderson, The Long Tail (http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/12.10/tail.html) and The Long Tail Why the Future of Business Is Selling Less of More, 2006 Hyperion

Chong & Carraro, Architecture Strategies for Catching the Long Tail (http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa479069.aspx)

Divekar, Software As A Service: Why It Matters (http://www.eco-bridge.com/uploads/EB-WP-SaaS-WhyItMatters.pdf)

Herbert & Erickson, The ROI Of Software-As-A-Service (http://erims.files.wordpress.com/2011/11/roi-software-as-a-service.pdf)

Hoque, The Speed of Business Today (http://www.baselinemag.com/c/a/Innovation/The-Speed-of-Business-Today-720022/)

Kanaracus, Gartner: SaaS market to grow 17.9% to $14.5B (http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9225590/Gartner_SaaS_market_to_grow_17.9_to_14.5B)

Kingstone, Understanding Total Cost of Ownership of a Hosted vs. Premises-Based CRM Solution (http://www.avecon.gr/photos/research/yankee%20group_undestanding%20tco%20of%20a%20hosted%20vs.%20premises-based%20csm%20solution.pdf)

Rothke, The Smart Approach to PCI DSS Compliance (https://www.braintreepayments.com/assets-6603bd239b/assets/309/pci-whitepaper.pdf)

SaaS Executive Council, Software-As-A-Service; A Comprehensive Look at the Total Cost of Ownership of Software Applications (http://www.techrepublic.com/whitepapers/software-as-a-service-a-comprehensive-look-at-the-total-cost-of-ownership-of-software-applications/272803)

Sehlhorst, The Economics of Software as a Service (SaaS) vs. Software as a Product (http://www.pragmaticmarketing.com/resources/The-Economics-of-Software-as-a-Service-SaaS-vs-Software-as-a-Product)

Weier, Software Maintenance Fees: Time For This Model To Change? (http://www.informationweek.com/software/enterprise-applications/software-maintenance-fees-time-for-this/212902014)