An ASPnews.com article presents some of the pros and cons of Software as a Service (SaaS) from the perspective of an independent software vendor (Chris Miranda of eMeta) who is clearly an SaaS enthusiast. He added a couple of advantages that I hadn’t fully realised.
One argument that will find favour with softwaver vendors is that "Piracy issues cease to exist in the SaaS world — they simply go away. Since users have to visit a Web site to gain access to software, what can be pirated?"
From the customers’ perspective, another advantage arises from the lower costs involved in changing between different SaaS providers: "software quality will likely increase industry-wide, due to the heightened competition that should result from lower switching costs. Both vendor and customer win with the service model."
