What is SaaS?
SaaS or Software as a Service is the one which delivers applications over the internet as a service. It is easy to use. No need to install or download the software, just simply access the internet and use the service. It saves your time by letting you escape from the complex and difficult software management.
We also know it as web-based software, on demand software and hosted software. Whatever the name is, their role is the same to deliver the provider’s service. You can understand SaaS by taking an example of a bank. Bank is the perfect model holding the key characteristics of SaaS. Just like in the bank, we kept the data of each customer private and secure. They all use the financial system without worrying about their security.
“It’s easier to make things people want, than it is to make people want things.”
A quote by Des Traynor.
What are the features of SaaS?
Listed below are some of the most important features of SaaS. They are:
1. SaaS has an essential feature of multi-tenant architecture. It is a type of architecture in which a single software runs a server and serves multiple customers at a time. It has a common infrastructure which is centrally maintained with the base codes. This feature lets you innovate quickly and make some valuable changes wherever required. It saves your time as you don’t need to maintain many versions of outdated code.
2. It allows you to customize quickly according to your choice. Change things which suit best to your business, without worrying about a change in the common infrastructure. The changes by you are unique, thus there are no chances of customer’s risk and lesser adoption cost.
3. It also provides a good range of access to all the network devices. You can easily manage privileges, track data use, and ensure that everyone sees the same information at the same time.
4. The organizations are now working on to develop SaaS integration platforms (or SIPs) for building additional SaaS applications. One of the famous firms called Saugatuck Technology calls this the “third wave” in software adoption. Because this time SaaS will move beyond standalone software functionality to become a platform for mission–critical applications.
What Should You Do To Build An Effective Saas Based Application Product?
Listed here are the ten multi-tenant SaaS application architecture best practices. If followed right, they will help you achieve your objectives. These practices of architecting SaaS web and mobile products will produce complex but scalable applications at a very lower cost. They are:
The most important thing is that your SaaS application must be self service. So the one using your application can simply login and start using it with no help given by the admin or the supporting staff. You can do this by providing the user guide or the details regarding the setup in the app so that the user can get an idea about the usage.
Personalization must be allowed to the user. It should be allowed with no help by the admin or the supporting staff. The user must have the freedom to change or personalize all aspects of your SaaS application. A high-level personalization on the SaaS app itself is ideal for a good user experience.
You should design your SaaS application in such a way that its performance is scalable. Because as soon as your SaaS app becomes popular, it must ensure to serve multi tenants effectively. It is also possible that you could expect users from all over the world to use your SaaS app. So, it should have excellent rendering and data querying abilities.
One of the crucial things is to keep the data of your user private and secure. Because here. You are a developer and being a developer you have an immense responsibility on yourself. Your SaaS application comprises multi tenants on the same infrastructure, so the security arrangement should be effectively working. Make sure the data is only accessible to a select number of people rather than everyone.
Your full dedication towards monitoring and maintaining the SaaS application is a must. As in software applications, the users have access to an entire internal IT team to help them with maintenance and usage. However, this is not the case with the SaaS application. You must dedicate yourself to monitoring the SaaS application as best as you can. While monitoring, look for things that have a negative impact on the performance. Usually the user also faces the problem of slow performance of the application. So figure out all important drawbacks and quickly work on them to bring them back on track. You can also take help of the tools to figure out the problems and then the solutions for solving it.
Try to achieve application scalability with your SaaS application. As this becomes quite important for the growth of your application. If you move your SaaS application to a server, which is more powerful and spacious, then you can easily attain the application scalability. For more convenience, you can also add similar servers to make it easier for your SaaS application to handle heavier loads in terms of usage.
There is another scalability which also needs to be attained that is database scalability. Upgrading databases from time to time lets you handle an increase in data, as now your SaaS application can gain more users and can thus facilitate more transactions.
Conclusion
A carefully designed and well-built SaaS application can offer an amazing experience to the users. And also the developers are at ease to see it working efficiently. Having a SaaS application can be extremely helpful, as you have a lot of opportunities in hand.
It’s just that you need to put some points into considerations for a properly designed SaaS based application of architecture. That can make sure about the care of security and scalability issues of the users.
Image by Pixabay from Pexels.
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