The disadvantages of existing on-premise systems were the high cost and responsibility of maintenance and ownership. Even upgrading from one system version to another can take considerable time and money in traditional systems. Building and maintaining in-house systems requires on-site system administrators and support patch management, hardware upgrades, and integrations among other things.

Hosted options had their own limitations. Most solutions weren’t feature rich compared to their on-premise offerings. Cost of video storage was too high to justify widespread usage. Data privacy and protection concerns required extensive vetting of vendor hosted solutions. Over time, these solutions have improved and become more full-featured and customizable.

We anticipate that this trend will only continue as the technology improves. Outside of market driven forces, there is a real practical need for hosted applications: lack of physical infrastructure, support personnel, contractual efficiencies, etc. Physical technology spaces are increasingly moving away from customer locations to off site, with increased reluctance to manage physical hardware assets.

Companies and organizations have therefore been trying out different approaches to gauge the viability of hosted solutions and how they can fit well in their environments. This includes switching to a hybrid model first, or moving extended archival off site, or picking certain locations that do not have physical infrastructure (or small in scale) to be hosted. We find that customers are also more comfortable with hosted models for certain applications, such as mass notification, PIAM or visitor management solutions.

SaaS trends and solutions are often an all-in-one offering that can optimize costs and streamline operations. However, like any trend, adopting new technology should be strategic and thoughtful to maximize the benefits and avoid the common pitfalls.