Welcome back.

So today's video I want to talk about software as a service.

Now, probably at this point in time, you're thinking Eli, why the hell do you want to do a video about software as a service?

We all know what software as a service is.

Oh, this is just this is just fluff content.

This is just content to fill out your catalog.

It's almost idiotic to do a video nowadays on an introduction to software as a service.

But what I want to explain to you today when we start talking about software as a service is that there is far Maur about software as a service.

As faras i t professional goes.

Then there used to be so when software as a service first came out again, you're thinking about things like a female or Hotmail, maybe sales force back in the day, basically, really, all it waas was it was a piece of software that resided in the cloud with more or less a Web interface, right, so you would log into the Web, you would do whatever it is you're gonna do up there.

You're going to your accounting.

You're gonna do your email.

You're gonna do your C R M.

Solution, whatever else, and then you're gonna log out right?

There really wasn't a whole lot to it.

You have to create user accounts.

He had to create passwords.

Maybe maybe you had to do something as fancy as creating a quota, but that was about it.

But the big thing that I want you to understand now in the modern world is that cloud infrastructure is now Maura and Maur tied into your regular infrastructure.

And so as cloud infrastructure gets tied Maur into your regular infrastructure, then there are a lot more opportunities to do things.

And there are a lot more things that you have to think about as an anti professional.

Now, a lot of I t professionals, you know, they think their jobs are about dealing with configuration tables are configuration files and routing tables and that kind of thing, and they don't They don't want to worry about terms of service.

They don't want to worry about licensing.

They don't want to worry about costs.

They want to do real technology, you know, getting their hands dirty, swamping hard drives or whatever else.

But something you have to think about in this modern world is that Maura and Maura of our jobs actually relate to terms of service and building and configuring things like quotas and doing that type of work rather than again swapping hard drives or shoving in ram chips into a server again.

Nowadays, the server may may very well not be in your data center.

You may never, ever, ever see the physical server.

And so you never see the physical server.

You're obviously never going to replace the power supply on the server that you never see.

But you are going be worried about things like limits on requests from servers.

For resource is, you're gonna be worried about things like pricing.

You're gonna be worried about things like the G a location of your data.

So nowadays, with more and more countries coming out with laws that require you, you actually keep customer data within a specific country or geography.

You're gonna have to start worrying more and more about that versus the old fashion stuff, just making sure that the server is running properly.

So we're talking about software, the service.

There's a lot of stuff that goes into this on.

There's a lot of amazing functionality we have now.

It is, but you really have to think about what you're doing, because if you choose the wrong software as a service provider, it can cause you and your company a lot of problems, and then you may have to do an unnecessary migration.

And as I say in the real world of I T.

The one thing that you never want to do is migrations.

No matter how well the migration goes, it will always be bad.

It's basically it's with what we have.

The thing about migrations, you know, from one service to another service is not really whether it will go good or not is just how bad it will go.

You have sometimes of migrations, only kind of suck.

Do you have other times where migrations are complete and utter disaster?

That's that's your range and migration is never going to be a fun, good thing.

And so the issue that comes up when you're thinking about going with a software.

The service provider.

Again, let's say you go for a C.

R M.

Solution.

A customer relationship management solution.

There's a lot of CR M solutions out there that simply cap the user's at about 15 right?

So therefore, small businesses, they specifically target small businesses the whole nine yards, and so they will cap the user's it.

Let's say 15 or maybe 20.

Now again, you've got a small company.

You're sitting there going Well, the C R M solution is only gonna cost us.

Exper month is only gonna cost us, Let's say $10 per user per month versus sales force, right?

Salesforce's like $50 per user per month.

So why am I gonna waste all that money on Salesforce?

We're not gonna have that.

Many users were not going to need all the stuff the sales force as the offer plus sales forces, you know, kind of ripping you off.

They're just charging that because of their name.

So we're gonna go with this $10 a month, the c R M solution, because that gives us everything that we currently need and is a price point we like.

Well, imagine if your company starts expanding and it starts growing.

And for some reason, you know, you're you're CEO comes up with the you know, the greatest idea comes up with the digital version of sliced bread, and all of a sudden you start selling product.

And so you bring on another salesperson, another salesperson, salesperson, and then, Oh, you're actually getting significant enough.

You have to have an operations manager and with the operations manager, you've gotta have a warehouse crew, and all of a sudden you start, you start growing and all of a sudden that c.

R M solution that seemed like it was fine capping out at 15 or 20 users.

Now that you have 50 employees, definitely is not keeping up with things.

And now all of your legacy customers, you have to migrate that to a new solution.

Then, once you go to the woods near solution, you have to train all of your users on how to use the new solution.

And again, it could be a bit of a disaster.

And so this is something where you really have to be thinking about when you're going with software as a service is not just what you need now.

Not just making sure you get what you need now again is another problem.

Sometimes people by the wrong product now, but not Is that what you need now?

But what you're going to need in a year, What do you need in five years again?

If you look at something like Salesforce, Sales Force is legitimately Kana priced again.

I think they're based model is like $50 per month.

But with sales force, you can grow that exponentially.

You can actually grow to be a very large company.

So you're thinking $50 a month, You know you may now, you may not need to pay $50 a month, but in three or four years, if you're thinking you might have 50 employees and when you have 50 employees than $50 a month, isn't that big a deal?

One of things have to be thinking about it again.

How are you going to be building out your cloud infrastructure over the years?

Because that's a little thing.

Like as you build APS as you create integrations as you create work flows.

Do you want to create all of this for a solution that you know you're gonna migrate away from like, $50 Month may seem like a lot of money now, but in a year or two, when you have to migrate everything that you've done again and think that creating things like work flows, especially for sales environments on operations environments basically what a workflow is just simply how work gets done, right?

So a customer a customer calls.

How do you provide service to a customer customer calls you, then plug their information into the C.

R M solution.

Then once that's pulled up, then you plug in whatever their issues are.

Once you figure out what the issues are, then you figure out the technician or the team or whatever that's most appropriate for, what's what's happening.

And then you actually have to schedule that team and then that can team goes out and that team does work.

Team comes back, they close out the work order, they put any final information in.

Then the bill goes to the customer.

Or however the building has done right.

That is what we call a workflow.

And so you you create that workflow in tandem with whatever software there you're using So if you create that workflow again for a software as a service solution now you got to migrate away from then, Not only you have to migrate away from what you were using to the new thing, which is gonna suck.

It's gonna suck.

But not only that.

All the people then have to learn.

Figure out what the new workflow is.

And then again, you have to think about like, what?

What connective ity you have.

So your accounting software again, you think about billing software.

So does billing software work with the C R M solution you're using Now, Will it work?

With the next one having billings off, we'll be able to connect seamlessly with again like a C R M solution.

That could be a very valuable thing.

So these are some of the things that you need be thinking about with the whole software as a service idea, whenever you're building out your infrastructure and architecture, because there is more to sell for as a service than simply, you pay five bucks a month and you get a user account.

There are so many things again what goes with what languages can communicate, what programming languages can communicate with yourself for the service.

What partners there are for the software as a service again, how you're going to be dealing with software, the service and many other things.

That's what What we're gonna be delving into today.

So the first thing that we need to talk about is how you're going to be interacting with yourself, whereas a service.

So again, a lot of people think about something like Gmail or Hotmail or sales Force or something like that.

And they think, Well, you know, the way that I'm going to be interacting with it is my users were going to log into a Web page, and then they're going to get access to whatever it is you know, we're purchasing, and that's how they're gonna use it.

You mean what?

What do you mean when you say, How are you going?

Be interacting with the song for the service was important.

Understand, with some for the service, that there's numerous ways of being able to interact with that software, the service.

And this is something that you need to be thinking about before you decide to purpose software.

The service The 1st 1 is just basically the day today.

Interaction with yourself, whereas a service Do you actually want people to have to be forced to a log into the service itself?

Or do you want to be able to use additional client applications that are able to log into the service for you?

Eso again using something?

Let's say, is a Gmail example.

So I used female.

And so for me, I almost never go to the female website.

I do not prefer to go to the female website, so I have my own male clients, right?

So although female is a software as a service and I can go to a Web page in order to interact with it, I just don't I just That's not how I prefer to do with it, very really.

D'oh!

I use my own male clients on my smartphone has a male client.

My computers have male clients.

They have the male clients at the calendar.

Clients have no clients.

All that stuff synchronizes through female.

But I actually I don't actually interact with female itself.

And so this is something to be thinking about when you're gonna be looking for a software.

The service provider is, does it?

Are you able to communicate with it with other clients again?

Back in the day?

That was a big problem with the map protocol.

So whenever you're dealing with email, there's something called a pop three protocol.

There's an I'm at protocol.

The pop three protocol basically allows you to download e mails from a server.

But once you download them from the server, they are in fact downloaded from the servant, right?

So if you have multiple clients that are connected to the same email account, if one client downloads the emails than the other than their downloaded from the server, the other, the other client can't get access to it.

So this was a big problem with smartphones were the new fancy thing.

It's gonna get a lot of people, and they would download e mails to their their computers or they would download e mails to their smartphones.

And then all of a sudden, some e mails were on their phones and some of you males were on their their computers, and that became a complete mess.

And so there's a protocol call.

I'm app.

So what I'm app allows you to dio with email service is is it allowing you to synchronize with the server?

So basically, if you're at your desktop, your laptop computer and you're using an email client using I'm AP Protocol, it communicates with your email server.

Then basically, it synchronizes so any any new emails that come in, they get copied, copied to your local client on then any modification.

So if you've deleted e mails, you put them in the spam bang.

You sent emails, that kind of thing that actually gets synchronized up to the email server, and then you go to your smartphone.

And again, it does a synchronization process, too.

So now the server, your smartphone, your laptop and any other client a computer that you have that logs into the email service has the exact same is exact same emails, so I can see my sent e mails on my smartphone.

I could see my sent e mails on my laptop, and both are equal.

So this is something that you need to be thinking about with some for the service again, like if you're if you're dealing with client applications again, something that's built in Were you, you know, some kind of native app for your smartphone or for your your tablet or for your computer.

One of things that you have to look at is what protocols doesn't use.