We have been sharing views on how an ISV can make smooth transition to the SaaS model.  Here we list down the next steps. If you missed the previous posts, check it out on our blog.

Step 7:  Design and Development
Our colleague and technical consultant, Tharaka de Alwis has identified some key factors that need to be taken into consideration when designing and developing SaaS applications and have put these in to good use on our projects. The SaaS model signifies a paradigm shift from the previously acknowledged software delivery models. Therefore new thinking has to go into designing and developing SaaS applications

Multi-tenancy – In order to cost effectively manage the cost of a growing tenant base, a single instance of the software is deployed.  In order to accommodate this, the software should be built on the principle of multi-tenancy.

Provisioning and Billing – An efficient provisioning system should be in place to address new requests.

User authentication and authorization – Each user of the tenant organization will have a unique ID and password. The system should have the necessary authentication and access privilege controls built in to it.

Scalability and resource management – A successful SaaS application will have hoards of concurrent users accessing the system. The application architecture and the infrastructure should be able to scale up and scale down as required.

Metering – SaaS apps are generally ‘pay-per-usage’. A robust metering mechanism should be in place to calculate usage levels of the application and generate monthly/quarterly bills based on these.

Reliability – sufficient fault tolerance mechanisms should be in place in line with the SLA to ensure a highly reliable software.

User Experience
A major driver of SaaS application adoption is the user experience. A rich, web 2.0 user interface will give a better experience to end users, leads to higher adoption rates; leads to more renewals; leads to a SaaS success.

Compliance
It’s also vital to keep a tab of compliance frameworks that maybe required in order to operate your SaaS application. Certifications such as SAS 70, PCI DSS are some of the standards that SaaS providers opt for.

Step 8: Adopting solid data security practices

A SaaS business must ensure that their application and client data is secure. Before selecting an IaaS provider, you should look into levels of security in place to protect their data centers, what backup and disaster recovery procedures they have in place and how they go about securing client data. The SaaS application should also have the capability built-in to clearly define user roles and access rights within a tenant organization. Users without the correct credentials should not be allowed to access more than what they are allowed access.

Step9: Adopting a solid support structure

You can have the best SaaS application in the market but without an efficient customer support service, you cannot expect your tenants to stick with your application. Put together a team of support professionals to handle ongoing customer support requests, carry out maintenance and upgrades.

Now if all of these sound too complicated for you to handle on your own, you can leverage on our services. We have developed a comprehensive SaaS architectural framework that will help you get a head start in your development efforts.  We will help you make a smooth transition to the SaaS model by bringing in our expertise.