Software as a Service: Configuration and Customization Perspectives

TLDR

SaaS delivers web‑based applications to many clients using multi‑tenancy, but its subscription model and standardized design require vendors to support self‑serve configuration and customization without altering source code. The paper investigates configuration and customization issues for SaaS vendors and distinguishes between the two concepts. The authors propose a competency model and methodology framework to help vendors assess and plan their configuration and customization capabilities.

Abstract

Software as a service (SaaS) provides software application vendors a Web based delivery model to serve big amount of clients with multi-tenancy based infrastructure and application sharing architecture so as to get great benefit from the economy of scale. Though SaaS application is usually developed with highly standardized software functionalities to serve as many clients as possible, many clients still ask for function variants according to their unique business needs through easy configuration and customization. Due to the subscription based model, SaaS vendors need take a well designed strategy to enable self serve configuration and customization by their customers without changing the SaaS application source code for any individual customer. In this paper, we will explore the configuration and customization issues and challenges to SaaS vendors, clarify the difference between configuration and customization. A competency model and a methodology framework have been developed to help SaaS vendors to plan and evaluate their capabilities and strategies for service configuration and customization.