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Software as a service (SaaS sæs) is a software licensing and delivery model in which software is licensed on a subscription basis and is centrally hosted. SaaS is also known as on-demand software, web-based software, or web-hosted software. SaaS is considered to be part of cloud computing, along with several other as a service business models. SaaS apps are typically accessed by users of a web browser (a thin client). SaaS became a common delivery model for many business applications, including office software, messaging software, payroll processing software, DBMS software, management software, CAD software, development software, gamification, virtualization, accounting, collaboration, customer relationship management (CRM), management information systems (MIS), enterprise resource planning (ERP), invoicing, field service management, human resource management (HRM), talent acquisition, learning management systems, content management (CM), geographic information systems (GIS), and service desk management. SaaS has been incorporated into the strategies of nearly all enterprise software companies. Centralized hosting of business applications dates back to the 1960s. Starting in that decade, IBM and other mainframe computer providers conducted a service bureau business, often referred to as time-sharing or utility computing. Such services included offering computing power and database storage to banks and other large organizations from their worldwide data centers. The expansion of the Internet during the 1990s brought about a new class of centralized computing, called application service providers (ASP). ASPs provided businesses with the service of hosting and managing specialized business applications to reduce costs through central administration and the provider's specialization in a particular business application. Two of the largest ASPs were USI, which was headquartered in the Washington, D.C., area, and Futurelink Corporation, headquartered in Irvine, California. Software as a service essentially extends the idea of the ASP model.

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Application service provider

An application service provider (ASP) is a business providing application software generally through the Web. ASPs that specialize in a particular application (such as a medical billing program) may be referred to as providing software as a service. The application software resides on the vendor's system and is accessed by users through a communication protocol. Alternatively, the vendor may provide special purpose client software. Client software may interface with these systems through an application programming interface.

Software as a service

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