SupportSpace Corporate Blog

Congrats to our Partner, Lavasoft!

 SupportSpace wishes to congratulate its partner, Lavasoft, on the 10th anniversary of the release of its award-winning advanced malware detection application, Ad-Aware! To mark this achievement, Lavasoft has released Ad-Aware Anniversary Edition which is significantly lighter and faster than previous version.

Continuing their tradition of dedication and commitment to their customers, Lavasoft has teamed up with SupportSpace to offer Ad-Aware users a unique support experience. Ad-Aware users needing immediate and live help can purchase a Live Help support session and connect instantly to a certified Ad-Aware Support Expert. The experts are available 24/7 and can assist in a number of ways such as: help using or configuring the software; updating to newer versions; helping remove viruses and spyware; training or troubleshooting and more.

Lavasoft promotes the Live Help support sessions through their Support Center and their newsletter. Experts deliver services to users from the SupportSpace SaaS-based workbench which contains all the tools and knowledge needed to perform the service.

Vendors, such as Lavasoft, chose to partner with SupportSpace in order to offer their customers high quality and consistent live online services that are delivered by a workforce of independent, certified experts. The service is operated as a full turnkey SaaS which can be fully branded for each partner.

Software as a Service (SaaS) – Have you come across it?

By Patrick Plawner

What is this new beast? Something you’ve certainly already used, maybe without knowing it. In short, SaaS (Software as a Service) also called; "on demand", is a way to provide access to an application you used to run on your local computer via the Web.

Imagine a company of 50 employees who need to use specific software. Instead of having to install it on each of their local computers, each employee can now access this software as a service, on the web.

Some Pluses:

• The version used is the same for everyone. Only one upgrade is needed and everyone is upgraded.
  
  
• Managing the licenses is easier. You pay per actual use.
  
  
• Support is somehow easier. Because you still have to support the product as any other product, but instead of running locally, it runs on a virtual OS for the user.
  
  
• You can use any OS, hidden behind the web page. This means you can get the best applications from different OS available on the market. As for the user, the interface is a Web page, even if the Web server is on Mac OS, UNIX, windows, etc...
  
  
• You can access the application, from anywhere and any web client.

Some minuses:

• Not all SaaS applications also offer off-line service, meaning that you need to be connected to the Internet server to get access to the application.
  
• Response time could be an issue, depending on your Internet Bandwidth or if the server is not able to handle its load from too many users.
  
  
• When licensing becomes an issue, SaaS is a way for Software companies to take better control of the actual users on their application.

Some examples of big players in the SaaS arena:

• Microsoft of course. Try out the latest version of SharePoint. It is simply amazing. EXCEL, WORD, OUTLOOK on a web page... First time you use it, you will be pleasantly surprised!
  
  
• SalesForce: CRM on line
  
  
• Google, in so many ways....
  
  
• And many more... the list is growing everyday

What about Support for these products?

It won't be very different. This won't make bugs go away and support and training will still be required as much as before. The environment will not be just the OS, but the Web browser framework. There may be some initial difficulties due to the different Web Browsers available which are not all compatible with these new applications.

Some links for more information:

• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_as_a_Service
• http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/architecture/aa699384.aspx
• http://www.coil-os.com/features.asp
• http://www.cornelios.org/