Recently I have been getting a number of questions
concerning the cost savings of a security-as-a-service (SaaS) model versus a
traditional on-premise solution. While there are certainly a number of direct
benefits to the end-user (easier to use and upgrades are usually transparent),
I thought for the purpose of this article to elaborate on the most important
one: “reducing the total cost of ownership (TCO) via the outsourcing of
security services”.
So what is exactly meant by reducing the total cost of ownership?
Well according to industry analysts a good portion of small to medium sized
companies out-source their security services to a 3rd party provider. Obviously
this strategy has real benefits especially to companies who lack the technical
ability to manage and maintain an on-premise anti-malware solution.
As a result, we're seeing a lot of SMBs outsource their
desktop anti-malware requirements to a managed service provider and/or adopt a
Security-as-a-Service model. This helps reduce complexity and time-to-market
when implementing new security technologies and will not require a high degree
of skill to maintain the solution.
Because SaaS traditionally hasn’t resided on-premise it
takes the overhead of managing and maintaining a complex myriad of technologies
and places the responsibility with the provider.
Take for example a small medicare facility with 100
employees; now if we factor in the following variables into the equation we can
clearly see the reduction in TCO as a SaaS model eliminates a number of
headaches associated with a traditional on-premise model:
* Eliminates the need for additional hardware or resources
required for managing and maintaining a SaaS based anti-malware solution.
* Upgrades are usually transparent, thus, the need for dedicating
time and resources to upgrade from one version to another is no longer present.