The emergence of SaaS is shifting perceptions and economics of IT; it is now mainline in many areas of business. In the tough economic climate many SaaS offerings outperform their on-premise siblings, standardising and pooling IT resources and automating many of the maintenance previously handled manually. Cloud architectures enable selling by subscription, self-service provisioning and elastic consumption. We take a look across the field at some great SaaS solutions that are acclaimed in the cloud today.
Microsoft Office Web Apps - http://office.microsoft.com/en-gb/web-apps/
Launched in 2008 Microsoft Word, Excel, PowerPoint and OneNote are conveniently packaged as online versions of the Microsoft Office productivity suite. The applications can be access via a web browser, Windows Live SkyDrive, Facebook Messages, Hotmail or Docs.com enabling you to access them anytime, anywhere. Other applications in this group include Lync Web App, formerly Office Communicator Web Access, Outlook Web App and Project Web App. Volume licensing can also host them on SharePoint Foundation 2010 or SharePoint Server 2010.
CRM
Workbooks CRM - www.workbooks.com
The Workbooks product has been on the market for two years now, offering a modularised, cost-effective pricing structure and guaranteed levels of service. Two y ears is not a great age for an organisation but it serves here to underline that this is a new and innovative solution that will suit new and innovative organisations.
Workbooks Free Edition (two users) but with some advanced functionality; Workbooks CRM designed for sales, customer service and marketing teams and Workbooks Business package are easy to use and web-based. The Business edition will cover everything from sales and campaign management to customer communications, sales processing and order fulfilment, service management and predictive analytics and is flexible enough to allow integration with others.
Document and Content Management
Astoria - www.astoriasoftware.com
Document management solutions control workflows, provide work spaces for organisations to store and access documents. Astoria On-Demand (part of of TransPerfect, Inc) has both an on-premise and an on-demand, web-based offerings which utilises XML component content management for document publication. It offers low total cost of ownerships and high ROI and has attracted positive commentaries from its user base. It supports multilingual output to a number of formats: paper, pdf, CD-ROM, web as well as a host of digital devices. Astoria has recently teamed up with OpSource Inc - Dimension Data’s wholly-owned enterprise cloud and managed hosting business, to expand the company’s SaaS business offering them greater flexibility and its customers 24/7 technical support.
Enterprise resource planning
Plex Online - http://www.plex.com/
Michigan-based Plex Online software is that comparatively rare thing – a comprehensive multi-tenant on-demand ERP solution for manufacturing companies offered as a service. The solution offers some 350 functional modules including operational management, quality systems, product lifecycle… Plex has been around as a single-source on-demand product for 10 years. It is comparatively mature as a SaaS product, with most of its new features having been driven by its 500 manufacturer user base.
Healthcare
CECity - www.cecity.com
Healthcare industry SaaS provider CECity offers a web-based technology platform and distribution networks to healthcare professionals for the advancement of continuous development and lifelong learning. CECity has made considerable investment in technology over the last six years resulting in operational and financial success as well as industry-wide recognition.
This article was written by Workbooks, a leading supplier of web based CRM software.
