Vitec ALMA offers its ALMA enterprise resource planning system developed for the life cycle management of technical assets as a SaaS service. SaaS (Software as a Service) is a software delivery model in case of which the service provider supplies its software to end users as a cloud service, usually via a web browser.
Development of the ALMA software started in 1986. Due to the long life cycle of the software, some of Vitec ALMA’s customers use the software based on a maintenance contract instead of the SaaS model. For new customers, Vitec ALMA has been offering only the SaaS delivery model for several years now.
“We recommend switching to the SaaS model to all our customers – this way, we at Vitec ALMA can offer better data security, take responsibility for continuous development of the data security of the software offered to the customer, and significantly improve customer satisfaction,” explains Janne Lappi, Sales Director of Vitec ALMA.
Switching to the SaaS model might raise some concerns for some customers. However, the benefits to be achieved prevail over the costs.
The most common advantages of the SaaS delivery model include standardised data security, outsourcing of overall responsibility, easy commissioning and upgradability, functional support service and maintenance, more convenient access to the software, and ongoing software development.
“In case of the On Premise delivery model, the customers themselves are responsible for many factors critical to the software, such as server security, server and database licenses and updates, virus protection, firewall, backup, support service access control and integration. These come with a lot of hidden costs, including the efforts of the IT department required to manage all this. In addition, the customers have no idea of the maintenance debt accumulated for the software,” Lappi says.
Lappi also reminds that when switching to the SaaS model, it is unreasonable to consider only the costs. The value of up-to-date and standard data security cannot even be adequately expressed with a price tag.
In fields critical to security of supply, data security is a key issue. Smaller companies do not necessarily have the expertise and capacity required for taking care of data security according to current standards. Even larger companies benefit from ensuring proper data security with the software supplier’s resources.
The new EU-wide cybersecurity directive NIS2.0 is to enter into force in 2024. This means that in many companies critical to the functioning of society, measures to manage cybersecurity risks must be reviewed.
“Compliance with the ISO/IEC 27001 standard fulfils many of the requirements established for data security. After switching to our SaaS delivery model, we will automatically take care of the data security requirements on behalf of the customer, as Vitec ALMA will be responsible for the compliance of data security with the standards. In fact, the data security of our software already complies with the commonly used ISO/IEC 27001,” Lappi points out.
In addition to improved data security, attractive features of the SaaS model include easier upgradability, more efficient support service, ongoing software development, and the notable added value resulting from all this to the customer. Over the last decade, the entire software industry has widely switched to the SaaS model.
“SaaS customers are provenly more satisfied. Customer satisfaction and permanence are positive for the software supplier as well, which is another reason why we recommend the switch to all our customers,” says Kari Trygg, Business Manager of Vitec ALMA.
“In case of the SaaS model, the software supplier always ensures that the customer has an up-to-date version of the software and that all product developments are available to the entire SaaS customer base. If there is no need to focus on customization and customer-specific maintenance, we can direct our time and personnel resources to software development, and that development is beneficial for all our customers,” Trygg points out.
In case of the On Premise model, the product used by the customer is modified and the software supplier is unaware of the changes made to the architecture over the years. In such situations, it is difficult for the support service to catch on with the problems. If the supplier produces the entire service, the producer can always examine the product in the customer’s environment, which improves support and customer service.
Vitec ALMA has rendered the switch to the SaaS delivery model as easy as possible for the customers.
“All that is expected from a customer is to contact us – we will go through the customer’s current environment together and construct a model for the transition,” Janne Lappi suggests.
Lappi promises that the objective is to transfer the customer’s current environment under the SaaS service while maintaining any customer-specific features.
“We will refine the solution created for the customer to comply with our latest, productised software. In practice, this means that the customer is provided with ready-made modules belonging to the ALMA system, which contain the same features and functionalities as the former software.”
One of the advantages of the SaaS model is that the software is pre-installed and pre-configured, which speeds up the commissioning process. The transition is swift and the customer needs not invest in a large commissioning project.
“We understand that our customers might be worried about the rigmarole of integrations resulting from the transfer. In ALMA, however, modern and secure interfaces are ready for integrations,” Janne Lappi stresses.
Once again, let’s consider data security. If a customer’s On Premise system involves a lot of integrations, the data security of all interfaces should be considered, as well as whether the customer’s own data centre would render numerous systems vulnerable to attacks.
“From the viewpoint of own peace of mind, it would be wise for a customer to delegate the responsibility for data security to a SaaS supplier with decades-long experience in operating in security-critical industries. As a software supplier for such industries, our responsibility is tremendous, which means that we must be prepared for and prevent problems by paying special attention to ensuring performance, service capacity, and data security,” Kari Trygg sums up.
We independently and continuously audit our data security in co-operation with our partner. Furthermore, several of our customers conduct data security audits of our SaaS solution. Therefore, all our SaaS customers benefit from improvements in the data security of the entire solution. This is an evident difference as compared to a private On Premise environment managed by the customer itself,” Lappi concludes.