ATECH MSP Blog

Despite what some songs say, the best things in life aren’t always free. Take, for instance, your software. If you or one of your employees find and download a “free” version of some business-critical application instead of properly purchasing a license, you risk catching the eye of the BSA.

There’s a reason that Google Chrome is the most popular web browser in the world. First introduced to the market in 2008, Chrome’s global market share is nearly 60% and climbing. One of the factors that make Chrome so popular is the ability to add ‘extensions’ to the browser. Primarily developed to enhance user experience through improved functionality or additional features, extensions are small applications that can be added to the browser's tool bar. To continuously create extensions that keep up with the needs of users, Chrome is “free and open source” software. Open source means that Google releases the browser’s source code to developers who are free to use it to develop extensions.

Applications and software solutions can be difficult to manage for some businesses. If you don’t have a dedicated IT department that is responsible for deploying patches and security updates, it’s not out of the ordinary to have software that’s not running the latest versions or updates. This presents a major problem in the form of security issues.

The public cloud is a massive industry with around $150 billion in annual revenues. Nearly half of that revenue is tied up in software as a service which has grown by about 20 percent a year for the past five years, and now makes up for over a third of all applications used in the world. Today, we will take a look at software as a service (SaaS) and why you should consider it, if you don’t use it already.