(Newswire.net — June 13, 2023) —
Software as a service, also referred to as SaaS, is a cloud-based software that allows data to be accessed from anywhere so long as you are connected to the internet.
There are many examples of SaaS you use in your everyday life, from accessing your email to using social media. Today, there are countless businesses in this field; it is the largest public cloud market segment, with a size of $104.7 billion reported in 2020.
SaaS uses the cloud to work, and companies can host their software applications over the internet without having their users needing to download applications to access them. Think about how when you access your email every day, you don’t need to download each individual email onto your computer.
Software as a service began to take off in popularity in the early 2000s with the dot com bubble. Many individuals made their names and began their successful careers in this time period, such as this individual interviewed here.
We’ll include examples of SaaS in this article, as well as some basic facts and history about the concept.
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Zoom
Zoom is a good example of a software-as-a-service company, as it uses the cloud to allow large numbers of users to connect with video and audio. This would not be possible without the cloud because it would take way too much bandwidth if each individual had to have an ongoing call with many people.
Check out Zoom’s official website here.
Zoom’s robust cloud services allow lots of scalability in addition to security and privacy, which is why it is one of the most popular video chatting software applications available today.
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Salesforce
Another example of SaaS is Salesforce. Founded in 1999 by Marc Benioff, Parker Harris, Dave Moellenhoff, and Frank Domingues, Salesforce quickly grew into one of the world’s largest companies. It made its initial public offering in 2004 and reached $1 billion in annual revenue just 10 years after its launch.
Some of the reasons Salesforce is considered a SaaS company are due to the company’s cloud-based platforms, the subscription models it uses, the scalability and flexibility they offer, as well as many other online services.
Since their IPO, Salesforce has grown 221X and reported annual revenue of $21.5 billion in 2021. This is a great example of how a SaaS company skyrocketed due to the popularity of SaaS.
In fact, Salesforce has their own page on SaaS! Check it out here.
How did SaaS originate?
Software as a service has been around ever since the creation of the first computers in the 1960s, but only became popular in the late 1990s and early 2000s with the creation of companies such as Salesforce.
In the 60s, SaaS was used interchangeably with “cloud computing” or “time sharing system,” and would eventually become known as SaaS (Software as a service). When office workers began to use their own computers, SaaS really took off in popularity and that is when many companies that are big in SaaS today were founded.