Chapter 11. E-commerce and Web Sales

The latest hype in the IT market is SaaS. It stands for Software as a Service and means that the customer does not install his software on a server located in his office, but rather uses just a pre-installed version of the software on a server hosted on the Internet. Usage is most commonly charged based on a service contract on a monthly or yearly basis.

This concept works for a selected market with specific requirements. The benefit is that you don't need to worry about server issues anymore. However, the downside is that you have no control over your data, which is the most important asset of your company. This does not sound like a good combination. There are also local government regulations related to data auditing and control that are problematic for this concept.