5 Reasons to Consider SaaS for Your Business Applications

Once a popular topic in IT circles, cloud computing is now part of the business vernacular. It's mentioned in the C-suite, it's mentioned around the water cooler where employees discuss their latest mobile devices, and it's now a part of consumer advertising campaigns. Cloud applications can be used to empower line of business (LOB) managers and their employees, ensuring they have access to the data, applications and features they need to do their jobs more efficiently and more effectively. This paper examines five reasons why LOB managers should consider business applications delivered using the software-as-a-service (SaaS) model, and in particular why they should consider SaaS business applications from Oracle. After investing heavily for most of the past decade, Oracle now offers the most complete and advanced suite of business-critical applications in a subscription (as a service) model. Users get fast access to the latest innovations without having to worry about buying any software or hardware. And it’s all built on the same modern, socially enabled, enterprise-grade cloud platform that leverages the latest in secure, reliable and high-performance database and middleware technologies for which Oracle has always been known.

Why SaaS Makes Sense for Business Managers

» SaaS-based business applications offer a number of advantages for LOB managers.

» Oracle offers a suite of SaaS business applications for project portfolio management, accounting, human resources and more.

» Oracle's SaaS business applications are backed by Oracle's investments in technology, infrastructure and security.

Software vendors spent the last several years bombarding IT professionals and business executives with messages about the advantages of cloud computing in its various forms. Some of these messages targeted the accountants and number crunchers by discussing the advantages of operating expenses (OpEx) compared with capital expenditures (CapEx). Others targeted the IT community with messages about scalability, on-demand capacity and the cloud's ability to take over the mundane tasks of infrastructure management and allow IT talent to focus on business problems.

There is a great deal of truth to each of these arguments, but little energy has been devoted to explaining to LOB managers why business applications delivered in the cloud via the SaaS model and paid for on a subscription basis not only make a great deal of sense, but are key to bridging the innovation gap executives often complain about to their IT organizations.

SaaS is not a new concept. In fact, web-based applications delivered by application service providers (ASPs) actually pre-date the "cloud computing" concept as we know it today. Early applications delivered using the SaaS model often focused on sales force automation (SFA), customer relationship management (CRM ) and web content management. Today Oracle delivers an entire suite of business applications for enterprise resource planning (ERP), project portfolio management (PPM), planning and budgeting, financial reporting, human capital management (HCM), talent management, sales and marketing, customer service and support, social networking, social marketing, and social engagement and monitoring.

Unlike those offered by many of the first-generation ASPs and other SaaS vendors, Oracle's SaaS business applications are mature, highly functional and backed by the Oracle name as well as the billions of dollars it has invested in software development and infrastructure to build and deliver its applications.

If you’re a business manager looking to get your hands on the latest capabilities without the headache often associated with hefty upgrades, let's dive in and explore the benefits of SaaS applications from Oracle. Yes, there is a CapEx vs. OpEx story that will appeal to the financial minds in your organization, and there's also a scalability and resource allocation story for the folks in the data center. But here are five reasons why SaaS business applications from Oracle will help your employees get their jobs done more efficiently and effectively than traditional business applications, with less risk than what’s often associated with on-premise deployment models.

Read it here