“SaaS”的起源(History of the term Software as a Service (SaaS))

 

“SaaS”的概念起源于1999年之前。2000年12月，贝内特等人指出“SaaS将在市场上获得接受”。“软件即服务”的常见用法和简称始于刊登在2001年2月SIIA的白皮书 “战略背景:软件即服务”。

 

第一个SaaS应用程序是SiteEasy，在1998年发起的Siteeasy.com网站中，由总部位于亚特兰大的公司WebTransit的特劳特曼和德鲁加里威尔金斯共同开发。

 

最早应用实现的是salesforce公司提出的SaaS 并运用于CRM行业。它是一种通过Internet提供软件的模式，厂商将应用软件统一部署在自己的服务器上，客户可以根据自己实际需求，通过互联网向厂商定购所需的应用软件服务，按定购的服务多少和时间长短向厂商支付费用，并通过互联网获得厂商提供的服务。用户不用再购买软件，而改用向提供商租用基于Web-base的软件，来管理企业经营活动，且无需对软件进行维护，服务提供商会全权管理和维护软件，软件厂商在向客户提供互联网应用的同时，也提供软件的离线操作和本地数据存储，让用户随时随地都可以使用其定购的软件和服务。对于许多中小企业来说，SaaS是采用先进技术的最好途径，它消除了企业购买、构建和维护基础设施和应用程序的需要。

 

 

 

History

Centralized hosting of business application dates back to the 1960s. Starting at that decade, IBM and other mainframe providers conducted a service bureau business, often referred to as time-sharing or utility computing. Such services included offering computing power and database storage to banks and other large organizations from their worldwide data centers.

 

The expansion of the Internet during the 1990s brought about a new class of centralized computing, called Application Service Providers (ASP). Application service providers provided businesses with the service of hosting and managing specialized business applications, with the goal of reducing cost by central administration and through the solution provider's specialization in a particular business application.

 

Software as a service is essentially an extension of the idea of the ASP model. The term Software as a Service (SaaS), however, is commonly used in more specific settings: whereas most initial application service providers focused on managing and hosting third-party independent software vendors' software, contemporary software-as-a-service vendors typically develop and manage their own software; whereas many initial application service providers offered more traditional client-server applications, which require installation of software on users' personal computers, contemporary software as a service solutions are predominantly web-based and only require an internet browser to use; and, whereas the software architecture used by most initial application service providers mandated maintaining a separate instance of the application for each business, contemporary software as a service solutions normally utilize a multi-tenant architecture, in which the application is designed to serve multiple businesses and users, and partitions its data accordingly.

 

The concept of SaaS has been popularized by Salesforce.com, which coined the term "The End of Software" to differentiate its (then new) software-as-a-service approach from its competition, which at the time offered only traditional on-premises software.

 

The SAAS acronym is said to have first appeared in an article called "Strategic Backgrounder: Software As A Service", internally published in February 2001 by the Software & Information Industry's (SIIA) eBusiness Division.^[7]

The popular camelback version of SaaS was coined at an SD Forum conference by John Koenig in March 2005 and is considered the tipping point of the industry adoption of the term "SaaS", including the point of departure by Salesforce.com, which for many years had used the "On Demand" tag.^[8]

from:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_as_a_service

 

[PDF] 

Software as a Service: Strategic Backgrounder

 - [ 翻译此页 ]

文件格式: PDF/Adobe Acrobat -  快速查看
Software as a Service: Strategic Backgrounder. February 2001. Software & Information Industry Association. 1730 M Street NW Suite 700. Washington, DC 20036  ...
www.siia.net/estore/ssb-01.pdf

 

 

 

What is SaaS?

Software as a service (or SaaS) is a way of delivering applications over the Internet—as a service. Instead of installing and maintaining software, you simply access it via the Internet, freeing yourself from complex software and hardware management.

SaaS applications are sometimes called Web-based software, on-demand software, or hosted software. Whatever the name, SaaS applications run on a SaaS provider’s servers. The provider manages access to the application, including security, availability, and performance.

SaaS: The Payoff

SaaS customers have no hardware or software to buy, install, maintain, or update. Access to applications is easy: You just need an Internet connection.

New to SaaS? Welcome!

If you’re just starting to explore the concept of SaaS, this is the place to find out what SaaS can do for you, see how SaaS is different, identify questions about SaaS, and learn more about developing SaaS applications.

 

SaaS Characteristics

A good way to understand the SaaS model is by thinking of a bank, which protects the privacy of each customer while providing service that is reliable and secure—on a massive scale. A bank’s customers all use the same financial systems and technology without worrying about anyone accessing their personal information without authorization.

A “bank” meets the key characteristics of the SaaS model:

Multitenant Architecture

A multitenant architecture, in which all users and applications share a single, common infrastructure and code base that is centrally maintained. Because SaaS vendor clients are all on the same infrastructure and code base, vendors can innovate more quickly and save the valuable development time previously spent on maintaining numerous versions of outdated code.

 

Easy Customization

The ability for each user to easily customize applications to fit their business processes without affecting the common infrastructure. Because of the way SaaS is architected, these customizations are unique to each company or user and are always preserved through upgrades. That means SaaS providers can make upgrades more often, with less customer risk and much lower adoption cost.

 

Better Access

Improved access to data from any networked device while making it easier to manage privileges, monitor data use, and ensure everyone sees the same information at the same time.

 

SaaS Harnesses the Consumer Web

Anyone familiar with Amazon.com or My Yahoo! will be familiar with the Web interface of typical SaaS applications. With the SaaS model, you can customize with point-and-click ease, making the weeks or months it takes to update traditional business software seem hopelessly old fashioned.

SaaS Trends

Organizations are now developing SaaS integration platforms (or SIPs) for building additional SaaS applications. The consulting firm Saugatuck Technology calls this the “third wave” in software adoption: when SaaS moves beyond standalone software functionality to become a platform for mission-critical applications.

 

from:

http://www.salesforce.com/saas/