I think about the benefits of cloud Software as a Service (SaaS) in terms of what I can avoid. When running an application in a datacenter the following tasks must be performed: Security patching of the operating system, application and database tiers, Security reviews, installation of an application that is foreign to the organization, Creation of a new virtual machine, Growing the data center foot print with associated cooling, power and management costs, Database licensing, Database maintenance costs, application maintenance costs, Storage & backup costs and Disaster Recovery (DR) costs. In a SaaS model, these expenses and distractions from your business can be outsourced to a group realizes economies of scale through specializing in single application.