What isn't a service these days?

It seems like every which way you turn another company is offering another service, just $10/month and it can be yours. Truly, Software-as-a-Service, otherwise known as SaaS, has changed the world. Office365, GSuite, Salesforce, Dropbox, Backblaze, and many other software products have shifted from the "off-the-shelf" software model to the SaaS model. More and more proprietary systems such as practice management, hotel management, and every other business management system you can think of has a cloud based system in the offering.

If you think about it, business applications have always been sold as a service. It is the pricing model and the location of your data that is changing. Instead of buying a server and a software package with a service agreement, vendors have simply moved their applications to the Cloud and are charging you monthly or yearly for their software. They manage the hardware, the upgrades, the backups, the maintenance, and provide you with round the clock support.

The advantage of this is clear. If you are willing to put your client's private information in the hands of your service provider (and their cloud service provider) you can wipe your hands clean of the the day-to-day maintenance tasks that go along with housing the data locally. Saying that, it is important to look closely at the security implications of working with a SaaS application vs using an in house system. The pros and cons are many and nuanced. In some cases you can rely heavily on a SaaS provider and trust that you and your client's data is secure. In others, it may not make sense.

We can help you asses these risks. In many cases you stand to benefit greatly by using SaaS applications. There are many smaller, yet critical applications that you can run in the Cloud with minimal risk. By installing the necessary redundancies and data backups the Cloud can be every bit as secure as your in house system. If you carefully approach how you use the Cloud, you can be even more secure with the Cloud than you are without it.