The world of software and software services has evolved massively over the past decade or so. With the introduction of cloud-based services, a whole new suite of products and product definitions has emerged.

Infrastructure as a service (IaaS) is a form of cloud computing that provides virtualised computing resources over the internet. Services like Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud have seen huge adoption as large organisations and start-ups look to benefit from on-demand compute in a managed way.

Platform as a Service (PaaS) goes further, providing a complete development and deployment environment in the cloud, with resources that enable developer teams to build, deploy, test and scale applications more easily.

Software as a Service (SaaS) is a model whereby a complete application is provisioned through the cloud and is supported, maintained, and improved by the vendor. This model allows users to access and use complete software applications quickly, easily and via a pay-as-you-go type licensing framework.

These three are commonplace in the IT world nowadays. But as businesses strive to gain competitive advantage, as businesses look to deliver transformational change through better application of data, and as the skills & resources gap grows as IT (in particular, data & analytics) accelerates, a new model is emerging.

Solution as a Service (SOaaS) is a combination of software and technical personnel. Comprising elements of IaaS, PaaS, SaaS, and consultancy, the SOaaS model combines proprietary software with highly skilled technical experts to deliver more customised and specific solutions for businesses.

SOaaS recognises that many businesses do not have the know-how or skilled resources required to deliver the applications and services that they need to utilise solely IaaS or PaaS services to realise tangible value from data. And the more complete alternatives (SaaS) do not recognise that every business is different, with a different landscape, different vocabulary, different systems, and different processes. Rigid SaaS applications may cut it for more straightforward or isolated administrative tasks but leveraging data to automate processes, deliver highly actionable, multidimensional insights and drive competitive advantage is not something they can do.

It is this model that we at Entopy believe is the way to deliver truly transformational change with data and help our customers gain true competitive advantage.

Entopy’s platform is highly flexible and can be deployed specifically to a use case or environment. Entopy provisions its developers to deploy the Entopy platform, using proprietary tools to mobiles environments quickly. As part of any deployment, applications suites, notification centres and API swaggers can be provisioned, providing platform-like tools to support developer teams accelerate and improve new and existing applications.

The Entopy platform is licensed in a similar way to SaaS, aligning cost to value. Ongoing developer support can be provided, effectively acting as an extension of your development team, helping to iterate and adjust the Entopy platform to meet challenges that emerge in ever-changing operational landscapes.