A Survey of Software as a Service Delivery Paradigm

Software as a Service (SaaS) is a novel model of software delivery. It has been gaining momentum in recent years. More and more SaaS adoption succeeds. This paper presents an overview of this emerging model. I compare SaaS with legacy software delivery model, and also with Service-oriented architecture (SOA). I investigate SaaS from different perspectives, from development to business model, analyze the competition between SaaS and legacy software, and discuss possible challenges and subsequences. After the survey, I conclude that SaaS could gradually take over the whole market. However, the integration, configuration and customization capability will decide whether a SaaS solution is successful or not.

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