Software as a Service

SIIA Strategic Backgrounder: Software As A Service (2001) | 8base: Is This a SaaS?

Software as a Service (SaaS) is a software delivery model in which a provider hosts an application over the internet and customers access it on a subscription basis, paying for the software itself rather than for transactions or content. The term was coined in February 2001 in the document “Strategic Backgrounder: Software As A Service,” published by the Software and Information Industry Association (SIIA), authored by Fred Hoch, Michael Kerr, and Anne Griffith. Salesforce (1999) is widely cited as the first purpose-built SaaS company. The defining criterion is payment for software access: marketplaces like Uber (transaction fees), streaming services like Netflix (“Movies-as-a-Service”), and Spotify (“Music-as-a-Service”) do not qualify as SaaS despite using cloud infrastructure and subscription pricing. They monetize transactions or content, not software itself.