Suzanne Pritchard, Junior Product Manager at TrustQuay, explains software-as-a-service and why it’s a game-changer for corporate services and trust administration
The technology industry is renowned for its acronyms. Many have heard of them without necessarily knowing what they actually stand for. SaaS is just one of those, and it’s becoming a buzzword in TrustQuay’s field of expertise – corporate services and trust administration.
To set the scene, let’s look back to one of our highlights from TrustQuay’s independent survey of the market – the Future Focus Report. One of its key findings was the dichotomy “between belief and behaviour” in the corporate services and trust administration sector.
Firms in the sector could see the value of digital transformation – but they still need to find a way to get there.
As TrustQuay Executive Chairman Keith Hale explained in the report: “Some 78% believe that digital leaders are more competitive, but only 6% felt their firm was itself a digital leader.”
The way to make that shift in digital leadership is cloud computing and SaaS. Back in 2020, the industry listed such solutions as one of the top areas of innovation to come over the next five years, alongside automating workflows and implementing client portals.
Then in March last year, TrustQuay’s Head of Strategy and Innovation, Adrian Akers, noted on TrustQuay’s blog: “One lesson from the Covid-19 pandemic has been the power and flexibility the cloud has demonstrated over on-premises deployment, and this will spur on firms to make the jump.”
What is SaaS?
When trust and corporate services organisations consider moving away from traditional on-premises systems towards the flexibility and scalability of SaaS and the cloud, the concepts of platform-as-a-service (PaaS), infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) and software-as-a-service (SaaS) – and their respective benefits – can easily become intertwined and confused.
So let’s explain the differences, with the help of a mouth-watering analogy – pizza-as-a-service.
• Stage one – on-premises software, or ‘homemade pizza’
Homemade pizzas are an art form and can take many hours to perfect to each individual’s exacting standards, but the preparation is entirely your responsibility. Similarly, on-premises software deployment has to be tailored to each organisation’s requirements and includes many factors for which you are responsible. From servers to network infrastructure, from the operating system to the application, the task of maintaining and operating an entire technology stack falls entirely under your responsibility.
• Stage two – infrastructure-as-a-service, or ‘supermarket pizza’
Supermarket pizzas increase the convenience factor – there’s only one item to buy and none of the kitchen mess. You are still responsible for the cooking methodology and presentation, but the supermarket provides the ready-made finished product for you to select and bake. Similarly, infrastructure-as-a-service provides your business with that extra convenience. You are still responsible for the operating system and application, but a provider takes responsibility for the servers and network, giving your team time to focus on activities other than just keeping the lights on.
• Stage three – platform-as-a-service, or ‘takeaway pizza’
Ordering a pizza from the comfort of your sofa to be delivered straight to your door, piping hot, is even more ideal. No oven required and no shopping list forward-planning. Similarly, platform-as-a-service removes most of the responsibility, with the provider handling everything except the application and data itself. Often confused with SaaS and often even marketed as SaaS, platforms-as-a-service and managed services do not benefit from multi-tenanted total cost of ownership reductions, do not have best-in-class availability and security ratings, and do not future-proof your business with the latest and greatest functionality.
• Stage four – software-as-a-service, or ‘restaurant pizza’
Perhaps the most efficient and preferable scenario is sitting down in a restaurant and being served your pizza, with the entire process taken care of. This is where the software-as-a-service analogy fits so perfectly. With SaaS, there’s no infrastructure and no software to maintain. Everything from the servers to the network, the operating system to the application, is provider-managed – giving you peace of mind around your disaster recovery, data integrity and information security.
Why opt for SaaS?
With the acronyms and alternatives explained, software-as-service can provide trust and corporate services with the most flexible approach to their systems, budgeting, end-client delivery and productivity. To keep things concise, let’s look at the top five benefits.
1. Streamlined budgeting
It would be hard to describe the long-standing model of a financial institution’s software purchases – and its hardware purchases on which to provision them – as entirely and rapidly ‘flexible’. Let’s take the example of the number of users, or seats, a system requires. And a scenario of a company growing by acquisition. The number of seats would naturally need to be quickly increased. And, with it, hardware purchases to make everything available and keep service uninterrupted. This is all possible if the flexing required is in the long term. But if it’s in the short or medium term, it can be very difficult to budget for usage increase and accommodate financially.
2. Capacity and server planning
If the above example and scenarios might be financially challenging for those in charge of software and hardware budgets, they generally prove even more challenging, logistically, for those managing the actual software and hardware itself. Flexing systems up ‘overnight’ can be nigh-on impossible with traditional on-premises, perpetual licence-based systems.
3. Integration with other applications
It’s very rare these days that software systems work in isolation. If they do, teams and data all too easily end up operating in silos. It’s far better to have software that integrates easily – as and when needed – to the other platforms you use. The ease with which integrations can be added and removed is potentially far smoother – and far more sophisticated as a result. In short, the technical due diligence of the integration of two cloud technologies will have already been done for you. As a result, connecting and integrating one system with another should be a quicker and easier process.
4. Seamless end-user access
End-user access becomes seamless when, the front, middle and back-office systems are all cloud and SaaS-based. Digital access by clients to their own information has now moved from a nice-to-have to a must-have, and the integration of front, middle and back-office systems in the cloud delivers this in the quickest and most cost-effective way.
5. It’s the experience we’ve all come to expect
While TrustQuay works with a diverse client base from all generations, the expectations around the flexibility of SaaS and cloud technologies of the millennial generation – and increasingly remote workforces, no matter what the generation – should always be top of mind.
Our work across TrustQuay’s industry sectors – trust, fund and corporate services – means our software is in use every day by the ‘digital native’ generations. These are the staff who are leading the charge for SaaS and cloud-based systems, because they are the users who demand the flexibility to access and operate their systems anywhere, anytime, and on any device.
Find out more
TrustQuay is a global leader in technology for the corporate services, trust and alternative fund administration markets. Serving more than 460 customers and over 20,000 users in more than 30 jurisdictions, it has nine offices worldwide.
The company recently launched TrustQuay Online, the first completely cloud-native SaaS platform for corporate services and trust administration providers – covering entity management, client accounting, general ledger and practice management.
For more information, visit: www.trustquay.com/online
• This advertising feature was first published in Businesslife's City Edition in August 2022