this post was submitted on 14 Mar 2024
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I don't think a VPN counts as SaaS, it's something that costs the company money constantly to run, SaaS is more like the Adobe apps, which are not a service at all and it doesn't cost them money for me to not uninstall it.
At that rate it just sounds like you're trying to categorically redefine SaaS to just be the crappy ones, while excluding anything with a reason to be a service
If it's an internet service that should be one, it's not SaaS. I'm not redefining it, that's just the definition. SaaS is just software, but as a (subscription) service.
Just because a service is hosted in the cloud does not mean it is SaaS. The service has to replace a software solution, or be replaceable with a software.
A VPN client is software. A VPN server is software. I can run a VPN client or a VPN server on my own hardware.
But any VPN server I install is going to use my own network connection. Not an anonymizing proxy. No piece of software I could run can replace the anonymizing service that a VPN provider offers. The anonymization feature of a commercial VPN provider is not SaaS.
Gmail (especially as part of the Google Apps suite allowing Google to handle the email for your own domain) could be considered SaaS. I could install my own email servers to handle email traffic in and out of my domain(s), but I'd rather pay for the convenience of not having to maintain my own email server software. Gmail, then, is a good example of SaaS.