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Copyright 2013 TechVentive, Inc., All Rights Reserved - Unauthorized reproduction, storage, transmission or quotation strictly prohibited. 9 separated. Some multi-tenant vendors can permit users to remain on a version of the version that is up to two prior versions past. Regardless, software buyers must use the data and design principles within this report as a framework for evaluating the possible long-term economics and product evolution of any solution under consideration. In assessing solutions, we strongly suggest you consider how any solution: - Frees up your IT resources – Will the new solution help keep your IT personnel out of the application maintenance realm and let them focus on more strategic applications and software development activities? Ask yourself :"What brings more strategic value to our firm: having IT apply patches, fixes, etc. to an accounting system or working on more strategic applications like a new mobile or e-commerce solution?" For many buyers, maintenance activities are often seen as tactical, not strategic, endeavors and as a result, these buyers want to minimize this work. - Can be enhanced over time – Will the software vendor be stretched in many directions and unable to dedicate a lot of its staff and capital into enhancing the licensed solution? Or, does the vendor have a solution that permits a more efficient deployment of its people, capital and intellectual property? The more efficient vendors should deliver a better quantity and velocity of enhancements. Closing The application software space is undergoing structural change. Customers are less willing to pay large upfront sums to license software and less likely to want to buy expensive computer hardware to run the application software. Customers are changing and vendors are following suit. The result is a whole new breed of on-demand applications: SaaS. But not all SaaS solutions are the same, and the economic differences for both the vendor and customer can be considerable. Multi- tenant SaaS solutions can be more advantageous than other deployment methods -- especially when one reviews how quickly multi-tenant applications can be built; how quickly new functionality can be deployed, and how cheaply these solutions can be to customers from a total cost of ownership perspective. This paper examined the economics behind the different deployment models available today. In general, we found that of all the new SaaS models, multi-tenant solutions are: - more cost-effective from a user perspective in that they can significantly reduce the customers' IT support costs for application software. - more efficient for the vendor to develop and support as there is only one technology stack and version of the software to support. - capable of faster and more functional development of the software suite as the regression testing needed for these solutions is often much less than for other deployment models.

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