It is important to remember; it is not the business of a start-up or a small-to-medium enterprise to be running their security system. That’s the business of an external security company. So, what the cloud has achieved, is that security is now a managed service for customers. So, if a business is selling cupcakes, that can be their priority.
This can lead to significant cost savings with the eradication of expenses like installing, maintaining and upgrading on-premises IT infrastructure, versus the operational cost of a SaaS subscription.
Software-as-a-Service (SaaS)
Moreover, as business and the need to add more users grow, rather than investing in additional in-house server capacity and software licenses, you just adjust your monthly SaaS subscription as required.
On taking a step back and examining where the industry was ten years ago, this was the case for most companies. Any company in a decent sized building would have had a security manager, an IT manager, an IT support manager. With the cloud, these are all external services that you no longer need dedicated bodies to manage. So, expenditure is down, making it an extremely cost-effective and attractive model. Security is just another Software-as-a-Service, as it should be.
Benefits of security integration
Where SaaS benefits Vanderbilt as a company, is the instant customer feedback it automatically generates. Vanderbilt can see what features are popular, which in turn shows what people want and expect more of. In the past, selling an installation disk provided no idea of how many panels it was being used on. But with software, the subscription numbers can help with that; for example, that a specific piece of software is being used on 50 panels. At a basic level, this can start the conversation on how to improve that software even more and make the customer’s experience even better.