Digital Lexicon Hub

A cloud delivery model in which a provider hosts and runs an application that customers access over the internet, usually by subscription.

SaaS shifts software costs from upfront licenses to recurring fees and moves operations to the vendor, which speeds rollout but makes data portability, contract terms and vendor security central to every buying decision.

A 25-person firm replaces an on-premises CRM with a SaaS CRM at $45 per user per month, or $13,500 a year, imports historical data from CSV, connects billing through an iPaaS and signs a data processing agreement.

Customers control only limited configuration, so roadmap changes, price increases, outages and data residency depend on the vendor. Exit costs and Vendor Lock-In grow as data and workflows accumulate in the platform.

NIST SP 800-145 defines SaaS as the consumer using a provider's applications running on cloud infrastructure, reached through a thin client such as a browser or a program interface, without managing the network, servers, operating systems, storage or even individual application capabilities beyond limited user settings. Most providers use multitenant architecture, and revenue is tracked with recurring metrics such as Annual Recurring Revenue (ARR).