The hosted software model makes sense if you are considering getting away from managing on-premise software.

A managed cloud vendor-hosted model is an ideal option to offload application management.  Because the hosting service provider builds the hosting site, deploys, provisions, and maintains applications for a monthly fee.

What is a hosted application?

An application deployed on a cloud-enabled server and is provisioned for users to access easily from anywhere.

Hosted application and SaaS work on the same concept except that a SaaS vendor manages the software and provide access online. 

One of the key advantages of the hosted software model is the mobile aspect. By deploying your application on a cloud-enabled hosted site opens the ability to access the software from any terminal or device with internet access.

Since the internet became a necessity to improve the quality of work and boost productivity, transitioning to the cloud-hosted model is a wise choice due to its advantages over traditional IT.

The top advantages of a hosted software model are:

• Anywhere access

• Reliable Backup

• Scalability of computing resources

• An overall reduction in IT costs

Anywhere access

Why is anywhere access essential?

Remote jobs, the requirement to connect to business applications from the project site, and access to collaborators, the external team are a few factors for anywhere access requirements.

Work from home seems to be a preference as it saves travel time and reduces stress.

The statistics on the work-at-home in the U.S. based on an analysis of the American Community Survey conducted by lobalWorkplaceAnalytics.com says 4.7 million employees (3.4% of the workforce) now work from home at least half the time.  47% more U.S. employers offer flexible workplace options than they did five years ago.

Anywhere access directly relate to productivity and efficiency. As the applications will run on a cloud server, staff will have the ability to access from anywhere, connect, collaborate, and share information in real-time.

Therefore, making the technology available for the employees to work from anywhere will help them produce more results.

Reliable Backup

Why you’d need a backup?

In case you lose some or all your data for any reason, you can restore the latest backup copy and continue your work.

2018 Global Data Risk Report says 140,000 hard drive fails in the U.S each week, and about 35% of data loss is due to malware.

Relying only on hard drives for storage or backup will put you at risk.

With a hosted software model and a cloud backup, your risk is less. If your service provider manages Azure, there are better solutions to overcome failures and the ability to restore quickly.

Backup is your first step to disaster recovery planning. Riverbanks IT management’s survey on SMEs (small and medium-sized enterprises) reports that 46% of companies didn’t even have a backup and disaster recovery plan.

A backup plan provides you details on the backup routine, copies of instances, locations it will be available, and restore methods.

Configuring and taking backup for servers, databases, and files requires the right expertise and tools.

The Cloud-based backup compliments the software hosting model and puts you out of significant risks; it is the responsibility of the hosting service provider to manage it for you.

Scalability of computing resources

Another significant advantage of cloud hosting is the ability to scale IT infrastructure resources.

Several factors drive the need to scale up resources. Server performance, change in system configuration to upgrade existing software, build a new system to deploy a new application, upgrade an end of support servers to the latest version, and increase in storage capacity.

With cloud-enabled hosted servers, you can make quick changes to the configuration, build a new system in less time, increase storage, and upgrade.

An overall reduction in IT costs

The hosting model sets your free from spending time in evaluation to the procurement of necessary components and eliminates onetime costs.

Since the cloud model is a usage-based, costs of servers, network, storage, backup, and resources to maintain should work significantly less.

The costs of on-premise infrastructure management include a large lumpsum and a proportionate recurring ongoing maintenance expense. With an application hosting model, it is a current recurring expense for the overall infrastructure management.

RightScale 2019 State of the Cloud Survey by Flexera shares the following information.

64% of the respondents have cost savings as their top cloud initiative, and 58% move workloads to the cloud.

So clearly, the cloud-hosted model has advantages over on-premise software management.

However, to gain competitive insight, ascertain the actual costs of managing your software on-premise and compare it with the pricing from a cloud hosting provider.

knowing your costs

It depends on your practice of maintaining financial information. Recording financial information across any industry would follow basic accounting principles.

However, to be specific in knowing the costs for managing on-premise software, you need a working IT cost model that can provide information related to single or multiple applications being managed on-premise.

You cannot otherwise make a comparison to understand if a cloud-hosted software model works for you or not, as cost optimization is key to the success of any business.