Software as a Service and the Pricing Strategy for Vendors

Software as a Service (SaaS) has been a dominant information technology (IT) news topic over the last few years. It is a new phenomenon where software as a digital product, instead of being locally installed and delivered as a product, has been shifted to being installed in data centers and delivered as a service. The users do not need to worry about the installation and maintenance of their software since these tasks have now become the responsibility of the vendor. In reality, many people are still puzzled about SaaS with other new technologies. Next to that, there are numerous enterprise users who hesitate to adopt SaaS solutions because of the idea of storing data outside their company. This chapter elaborates on the state-of-the-art of SaaS from both scientific and business perspectives to help readers better understand this technology.