Hosted Aps and SaaS - are they the same or different?

In the on-demand side of the ECM world, we hear the terms 'hosted', 'ASP', and 'Software as a Service' (SaaS) used almost interchangably. In fact, I've had folks tell me that these types of platforms are basically the same and that the differences are vendor concoctions that don't really matter to the end user. But they do matter, in no small part because of the multi-tentant architecture that defines a true SaaS application. And if you are at all interested in the what is at the core of a hosted vs. SaaS application, please check out a terrific article that explains the differences far better than I can. It was posted in Baseline Magazine by John Jainhschigg:

http://www.baselinemag.com/c/a/Web-Services-and-SOA/SaaS-Versus-Hosted-Apps/

Cheers,

Chris Ryan

3 Comments

Comment by Gregory Buchenberger on June 27, 2008 at 9:43am: Interesting article. Thanks.

Comment by Alan Turner on July 7, 2008 at 12:42pm: Although the referenced article does a good job of defining the different potential deployment models it fails to mention that sometimes, for security reasons, customers do not want co-mingling of their data, and a single instance, even hosted, is desirable.
So, as is so common in our industry, we need to be able to provide choices for our customers.

Comment by Chris Ryan on July 7, 2008 at 1:45pm: Alan, your point is well taken and some companies are certainly reluctant to co-mingle their data/content with others on a single software instance, at a shared data center. But being an enthusiastic SaaS proponent, I remind these folks that internal company data breaches have been far more common than SaaS losses. I also remind them that the most ubiquitous SaaS application is online banking, and very few people seem to mind that their personal and highly sensitive financial data is maintained in a shared environment. Whether the application is online banking or on-demand ecm, SaaS 70 certified data centers offer very impressive security.