Data on Demand
By Alice LaPlante
Ramiro Perez doesn't like to wait around. As purchasing manager for Copart Inc., a $500 million automotive services firm based in Fairfield, Calif. helping insurance companies process and sell "total loss" vehicles, his job is all about efficiency -- and that's as much about making sure his organization doesn't waste time as it is about controlling costs. That's why last year Perez convinced his IT director to sign up with ExpenseWatch, a hosted Web-based application for managing operating expenses.
"We run 120 sites throughout the United States and Canada," says Perez, "and the people in our organization who have the authority to sign purchase orders and invoices are always traveling. With ExpenseWatch, our executives can access expense reports, contracts, invoices and quotes as they need them from anywhere in the world. It's extraordinarily efficient."
Welcome to the era of on-demand software. Also known as software as a service (SaaS), these applications are enticing enterprises to move critical data from internally based systems to multi-tenant, hosted solutions.
Access Anywhere at Any Time
SaaS offers companies new solutions to the perennial problems of cost, risk and, most of all, access.
Although corporations have long provided employees with remote access to applications and data inside the firewall, on-demand applications make remote access the norm rather than an additional access route. For the most part, there's no client component allowing new users to sign up swiftly and easily. Employees can use any Internet PC (article continues)
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