Software-as-a-service, or SaaS (News - Alert), is rapidly becoming the solution delivery of choice compared with traditional premises-license installs as it provides greater flexibility and scalability while permitting customer firms to shrink their computer and support footprints.

Numara Software, the mid-market leader in service management and asset management solutions for IT professionals, has become one of the latest firms to offer expanded, flexible options for hosted and SaaS-based delivery. Numara Software (News - Alert) now offers its ITIL v3-compatible Numara FootPrints IT service desk management solution with a wide set of flexible, on-premise and off-premise deployment options, including a subscription.

Numara Software’s FootPrints SaaS offering is different from other similar hosted options. Yet, while too many products’ SaaS delivery selections are stripped-down versions of their premise-license products, Numara Software’s SaaS option is the same solution that has been available on- or off-premises on a perpetual license basis.

“Customers will not sacrifice functionality or be forced into a specific configuration if they prefer to use the product on a subscription basis,” said Numara Software. “Whether organizations run their deployments in SaaS, hosted or on-premise, they all run on the same service management code base with the ability to choose the services they want to use in any combination of named and concurrent licenses.”

The rigid pricing models and pre-determined solution sets offered by existing SaaS providers force them to buy more than they can use, lock them into long-term deployments and result in unnecessary spending on deployment changes, said the firm. In contrast, Numara Software gives its customers more choices that deliver significant advantages it says over other hosted products.

Numara Software SaaS customers can move between subscription-based pricing (solving for limited budgets), perpetual license pricing (a lower total cost of ownership over multiple years) or the ability to move from one to the other. Subscription pricing includes discount tiers based on size and complexity of deployment.

Customers can also mix named and concurrent licenses, which allows them to optimize for their business usage needs, choose between hosted and on-premise infrastructure options (and switch if they need to) and easily transition their solution in-house while leveraging their subscription investment. Numara Software said it stays true to the spirit of SaaS by allowing customers to choose and pay for only the modules they require.

 “IT executives have been looking for flexible delivery models for IT service management”, said Fred Broussard, research director of PC, device and IT management software at IDC (News - Alert), in a statement. “Solutions for easy migration to and from on-premise and hosted/SaaS environments and the ability to automate IT service desk and non-IT processes, such as in Numara Software’s offerings, can provide this flexible delivery.”

“As a leading service management and asset management vendor, our goal is to offer our customers the greatest flexibility possible with our solutions,” said David Weiss, president and CEO of Numara Software. “Our Numara FootPrints SaaS offering goes well beyond the SaaS options currently in the market in solving for IT departments’ range of needs today. We focus on helping them achieve their IT objectives for efficiency, cost management and service delivery to their own customers. Numara Software has always worked closely with its global customers to identify and address their varying service management needs. “