From Legacy to Cloud Success: How is SaaS Migration reshaping businesses?

Quick Summary: Unlock boundless business opportunities with SaaS migration and discover how its transformative functionalities can streamline IT operations and reduce infrastructure costs, with a multitude of benefits awaiting. This blog explores how businesses are embracing cloud solutions to drive innovation, boost productivity, and stay ahead with a competitive edge. Stay tuned for detailed insights on the future of SaaS migration and its profound impact on businesses across the board.

As the global IT ecosystem has shifted towards rapid modernization to satisfy evolving business needs, cloud computing as-a-service industry has garnered significant attention.

We are all aware of the fact that traditional on-premises software solutions fall short of meeting the dynamic needs of the competitive market. In today’s era where growth is not merely a choice but a necessity for organizations, the significance of cloud computing or SaaS migration cannot be overstated.

Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) migration has emerged as a transformative force, empowering businesses to enhance customer experiences, lessen overhead expenses, and embrace unparalleled growth.

It bids farewell to cumbersome infrastructure, costly maintenance, and outdated software versions – sounds tempting for every business owner!

As Accenture stated, “Public Cloud Migration results in saving up to 30-40% total cost of ownership (TCO). This means it opens doors to seamless scalability and acceleration in innovation.

Well, we can understand that transforming all business processes and operations on cloud SaaS seems navigating through a fog of doubt.

But do not worry, we will deep-delve into this transformative solution and harness the immense potential of SaaS migration.

Let’s start!

What is SaaS?

Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) is a web-based software delivery model in which software and applications are hosted centrally and provided over the Internet. It has emerged immensely promising with its feature-rich functions, cost-effective, secure, and pay-as-you-use model. SaaS surpasses the traditional on-premises software model as users need to pay on a Subscription basis, rather than purchasing a perpetual license. With SaaS, the software providers develop, host, and manage all aspects of the application, including infrastructure, security, updates, and maintenance. It is one of the three core categories of cloud computing, along with infrastructure as a service (IaaS) and platform as a service (PaaS). To better understand the difference between cloud computing categories, you can read SaaS vs. PaaS vs. IaaS.

Wholly, SaaS simplifies the access and management of software and applications, enabling businesses to focus on their core activities while leveraging effective software and applications.

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What is SaaS Migration?

SaaS Migration is defined as the process of migrating software applications from on-premises infrastructure to a cloud-based model. It involves transitioning the entire business operations from hosting, and management to delivery of software applications. It offloads the burden of hardware maintenance, regular updates, and infrastructure scalability to the SaaS service provider.

To keep up with the evolving business trends, the SaaS migration adoption brings a box of SaaS benefits to organizations.

Why Migrate to SaaS Business Model?

With on-premises infrastructure, businesses need to burn their pockets on purchasing and maintaining expensive hardware and software licenses. On the contrary, SaaS solutions offer flexible subscription models and allow for better financial planning. It significantly reduces costs and provides opportunities to scale as companies can simply adjust their budget level as per their requirements and usage.

Migrating to SaaS models can also relieve organizations and IT staff from tedious tasks of maintenance, updates, and security. It frees up your valuable resources and allows businesses to focus on their core competencies and new capabilities. Furthermore, businesses can enjoy the flexibility and unparalleled accessibility of SaaS application development services anytime and anywhere.

SaaS Migration can keep your organizations at the forefront in innovation and a competitive edge. Even Cloudwards states, approximately 100+ zettabytes of data will be kept on the cloud by 2025, thus leading to growth in SaaS Cloud Migration.”

This proves that SaaS Cloud Migration is here to stay.

Benefits of SaaS Migration

SaaS cloud migration provides several benefits that can have a transformative impact on businesses. Here are a few core benefits listed below to encourage your organization to decide whether a SaaS model is an ideal fit to meet your objectives.

1. Lower IT Burden

With the SaaS Migration process, businesses can eliminate the need to hire IT staff for managing services and IT infrastructure. Instead, the SaaS service provider will handle and manage the entire technical aspects of your software, including the latest updates, maintenance, and patches. This leads to lessening the IT burden on your in-house workforce and they could contribute to other core innovative operations.

2. Streamlined IT Operations

Moving to SaaS can simplify your overall IT operations. The SaaS service provider will take care of everything from installation to maintaining a smooth ongoing process. Their SaaS professionals excel at timely software maintenance, security patches, and infrastructure management. As a result, it ensures your IT operations management is in the hands of professionals and you can freely get involved in other progressive activities.

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3. Lower Total Cost of Ownership (TCO)

By moving the traditional on-premises software model to the SaaS cloud, organizations no longer bear the huge capital cost associated with expensive hardware procurement, software licensing, installation, maintenance, and scalability. As mentioned, SaaS migration offers you a subscription-based pricing model based on your business requirement. This SaaS subscription model covers the entire expense - from hosting to support. This can lead to a significant cut-down in TCO and encourage long-term cost-saving.

4. High Scalability Opportunities

SaaS pricing models have flexible access that allows you to scale software operations based on demand. It leads to simply adding or reducing SaaS services as per your business requirement and avoiding over-provisioning. Now, you do not need to worry about breaking your banks for additional servers and software licenses.

5. Quick Deployment

The conventional on-premises model consists of a lengthy installation process, as it requires the setting up of data-center hardware and alteration of software as per the business requirements. This leads software users to wait for months to experience system usage. While SaaS cloud migration has built-in practices that allow you to browse and access your software in days or weeks. This witnesses a rapid SaaS deployment process.

6. Smart Pricing Model

Having a smart pricing model is one of the attractive benefits of SaaS migration. A SaaS development company will often offer flexible pricing models, which means you only pay for what you use. This can help you reduce your overall costs and improve financial planning.

7. Focus on Core Competencies and Innovation

With SaaS migration, you will outsource your IT operations from reliable SaaS vendors. This provides companies with enough time and valuable resources to utilize in innovation and other growth-oriented areas of their business.

8. Enhanced Security

SaaS migration strategy is designed to strengthen privacy and robust security demands to safeguard sensitive data. SaaS vendors usually provide strong security measures, including encryption, regular audits, and access control. Furthermore, they have a team of professionals who stay updated on security threats and other vulnerability patches.

Challenges of SaaS Migration

SaaS cloud migration has its own challenges. While tons of businesses migrate to SaaS to take advantage of cloud infrastructure, it is necessary to be aware of its challenges. Let's glance at some dominant ones!

1. Cultural Transformation

The shift to the cloud from an on-premises model often requires IT teams to face several technical challenges and shifts in responsibilities. It entails embracing new operational cycles and practices. With all the changes taking place, robust internal communication with SaaS cloud providers allows you to swiftly hold a grip over this tricky transition.

2. Data Interoperability Hurdle

The process of data exchange between SaaS applications and existing tools can pose a significant hurdle. In-between, compatibility issues, smooth data flow, and migration may require strategic planning of software development metrics, customization, and technical expertise.

3. Uncertain SaaS Migration Cost Management

Sometimes, the estimated cost of SaaS software development can be uncertain. There are several factors that usually influence the SaaS cost such as data storage, bandwidth, storage, integration, and custom software development requirements. Everybody needs to be aware to avoid such unexpected expenses and optimize costs accordingly.

4. Skill Gap

SaaS migration strategy often requires strong technical expertise that may not be available within the organization. Bridging this skill gap requires assessing the existing teams or potentially hiring SaaS developers who possess the required expertise and capabilities.

5. Strategic Security Planning

Businesses that are new to SaaS business development need to develop data security strategies to protect critical data. It involves assessing potential vulnerabilities, implementing security measures, and ensuring compliance with the industry standards.

Types of SaaS Migration Model: Which One to Choose?

Businesses migrate their legacy system to the SaaS cloud for diverse reasons as per their business needs. Similarly, the cloud computing industry offers a diverse range of SaaS migration models to better serve evolving business needs. Let's uncover and select the best-fit model for your business!

1. Fragmented Migration

In this model, businesses migrate different components and departments individually, resulting in isolated systems or data silos. It is an ideal model for businesses that require complete control over their data without sharing their infrastructure with other users.

2. Layered Migration

This model involves step-by-step shifting, where different tiers of application or infrastructure migrate incrementally. It ensures a phased migration process and allows for validation at every phase. With this model, businesses can start with small steps and slowly move to a cross-functional model.

3. Data Migration

This model particularly focuses on the migration of data from one system to another. It involves data mapping, extracting, transforming, and loading to ensure seamless data integrity and transition. It can prove beneficial for businesses that want to migrate heavy on-premises data of both single and multi-tenant to a cloud infrastructure at once.

4. Parallel Migration

In this model, both the traditional and cloud systems run simultaneously during the transition process. The parallel migration allows seamless transition in less time to minimize downtime. It is an ideal fit for businesses that want to compare the outputs from legacy on-premises systems against new SaaS business models before publishing them live.

How to Migrate a Traditional App to SaaS?

SaaS Migration involves a multi-step process that starts with strategic planning. Let's uncover the other steps to migrate a legacy system to a SaaS application:

1. SaaS Migration Roadmap

The creation of a strategic roadmap is the first step while transitioning to the SaaS model. It involves thorough research and evaluation of the existing infrastructure and other capabilities of the application. Based on that, the subject matter experts build a roadmap by identifying vision and planning for strategies that work for their organization.

2. SaaS Design and Development

This step proceeds by holding the grip of the roadmap. In this stage, organizations decide whether their application needs complete/partial redesigning or redevelopment to align it with their SaaS migration goals. There are several factors that are highly considered during this stage such as cross-functionality, scalability, security, and other cloud-based features. However, the prime aim is to maximize the utilization of built-in practices and minimum alteration to the SaaS cloud application.

3. Evaluation and Feedback

It is a result-revealing stage that can make or break the entire SaaS migration process. During this stage, businesses gather feedback from stakeholders or their potential users. Based on their reviews, the workforce refines the SaaS application, ensuring it meets their client's expectations.

4. Testing

This is where the entire application goes through a thorough testing process to ensure that it functions properly. The certified testers assess the application's compatibility, integrations, security, performance, and overall customer experience.

5. Data Migration Process

Once the application passes the testing and analysis phase, it is time to deploy the SaaS application on the cloud infrastructure.

By following these steps, businesses can simply migrate their legacy system to a SaaS model. Simultaneously, unlock its capabilities of scalability, flexibility, and cost-effectiveness for their businesses.

Real-life Examples of Businesses adopting SaaS Migration

You can find an expansive range of Fortune brands that have successfully adopted SaaS migration. Let's see some of the prominent real-life examples:

1. Salesforce

Salesforce is one of the prime examples of SaaS migration. It adopts the SaaS model by rendering cloud-based CRM (Customer Relationship Management).

2. Adobe

Adobe migrated its popular on-premises Creative Suite software to a cloud-based subscription model of SaaS.

3. Netflix

A popular video streaming platform migrated its DVD rental model to subscription-based streaming services.

4. Zoom

Zoom, an industry-leading video conferencing platform transited from on-premises systems to a cloud-based SaaS business model.

5. Slack

A popular collaboration and messaging platform, established as an internal tool for a gaming organization but eventually migrated into a standalone SaaS offering.

These examples demonstrate how industry-wide organizations have successfully transited to a cloud-based model and leveraged its benefits.

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Let Radixweb Modernize your Business with SaaS MigrationHopefully, now you have found diverse reasons why your business should consider the SaaS migration model. However, we can understand migrating to the SaaS model is not child's play.Radixweb Experts are always ready to guide you and unlock the best SaaS features for your organization. Since 2000, Radixweb has been a trusted software partner and an award-winning SaaS Product Development Company for developing sustainable SaaS solutions across the globe. We are an industry-leading SaaS Development Company, backed by a certified and dedicated development team that strives to deliver phenomenal customer experience.When one of our SaaS clients, FastTrack360, was asked what is unique about our company, he responded: “Radixweb being a one-stop solution provider, helped us reduce extra overheads. The ongoing enhancement and support from the Radixweb team we received for our SaaS product increased the ability to capture a wide range of markets. We are quite happy and satisfied to have an experienced team by our side for a long-term partnership.”Have any questions or ideas about the SaaS project? Feel free to contact our SaaS development Experts and ease your migration process.