The concept of software as a service (SaaS) took hold at a time when IT executives were getting supremely fed up with the ballooning costs of packaged enterprise software. Not only did they have to shell out thousands of dollars just for the licenses, but they also had to spend tens if not hundreds of thousands more to implement the software. There were the consulting fees. And the training costs. And the extra infrastructure that was required to run the software in addition to ongoing maintenance fees. Thus, SaaS emerged from the wreckage of botched multimillion-dollar ERP and CRM implementations as a radical alternative to traditional software licensing models. SaaS promised easier, speedier and cheaper implementations. The value proposition was hard to ignore, but so were the risks. To this day, SaaS remains an intriguing option for many enterprises, and for that reason, we offer the following answers to explain what SaaS is and to help you determine whether it’s right for your organization.