Educloud

Google ‘education software as a service’ and you will see there are approximately 148 billion results.

Talk to a teacher and it is likely that many of them will be unfamiliar with the term or realise the benefits of it.  Traditionally, educational software has been delivered ‘in a box’, whether that box contained a disk, CD-ROM or more recently, a school network where software was accessed from a PC or handheld device.

Software as a Service (SaaS) has been around since the late 90s/early 00s.  As it becomes more mainstream, education software suppliers are starting to take notice of this model and recognising the benefits associated with providing SaaS.

We’ll take a look at what all this means for education and answer the question: “does education really need SaaS?”

What is SaaS?

SaaS enables a school to purchase access to software for a few pounds per student as an on-demand service.  Most SaaS providers charge an annual fee, although some suppliers will ask the school to sign-up to a three or five year deal.  The software is typically accessed online via any mainstream browser which means that as long as you have a device that can access the Internet, then in most cases you can access the software.

How can SaaS benefit schools?

Schools can expect to only purchase access for the number of students using the service, therefore the cost of the software is greatly reduced.  SaaS is centrally hosted so the school does not need to use its IT resource to set or manage the software, enabling them to concentrate on other areas.  As it is web-based, students and teachers can access the software from anywhere – fully enabling 24/7 learning.

SaaS solutions also means that the school can be using the software in a matter of days, have a product that is quickly and incrementally scalable and that is kept up-to-date by the supplier (maintenance is no longer the schools problem).

How can SaaS benefit suppliers?

Education suppliers also benefit from SaaS as it provides a revenue model that gives a regular income each year.  This means that the supplier is able to keep the software updated as it is no longer providing a product with a shelf-life, but a growing, organic service to schools.  Suppliers can launch a product with several features which can be added to as feedback is received, to ensure that it is meeting the needs of the education community.

Regular income also means that the supplier has the ability to assign regular resource to the software, again ensuring its shelf-life is far longer than ‘out-of-the-box’ software.  They also avoid the nightmare associated with supporting different schools using different versions of their software, some often years out of date.  By doing this, SaaS providers can continue to provide their customers with a more focused and (if they’re good at what they do) higher quality of service.  If they don’t then the customers won’t purchase for the next year and the supplier will lose their ongoing revenue.

So is it worth it?

Absolutely: SaaS provides a win-win situation for both schools and suppliers.  Schools gain current, up-to-date software without having to spend huge amounts of resource and money on looking after installations, servers and the like.  Suppliers provide software that is service driven, ensuring that they retain their customers and grow their businesses each year with a focus on improvement, enhancements and customer experience, thereby creating a high quality and sustainable business.