Newest HR Software Terminology – PaaS

Software as a Service (SaaS) has become practically a household name in the HR industry. However, there is always a new development just around the corner and it’s hard to keep up with the technical lingo. The latest concept making its way into HR software vendor’s vocabularies is PaaS. Platform as a Service refers to more than the practice of offering a specific application over the web. With PaaS, Web 3.0 is in the mix. Software companies develop and run instances of their applications on the cloud computing platform. These resources are made available as a service by companies such as Amazon. Client data is hosted, stored, and transferred using virtual servers (this part of the picture is sometimes referred to as IaaS or Infrastructure as a Service).


What’s Different for HR?

The actual applications are still accessible via the internet just like traditional SaaS. The end user’s experience of the software doesn’t really change with a PaaS approach. However, there are other issues that can impact HR software choices from a strategic perspective. With virtualized servers and highly flexible platforms, it is possible to run an entire HRIS suite in the cloud environment. What was once the province of niche applications is becoming a standard offering from even the largest HR software vendors. IT and HR will need to collaborate closely to determine if and when moving the management of HR data and processes to the cloud is beneficial from a cost, maintenance, and security perspective.

The ability of smaller, niche HR software providers to serve clients is also enhanced with the advent of PaaS. Now, it is possible for them to run as many instances of an application as needed without increasing their costs for maintaining a permanent infrastructure. This server space and the computing capability being used can be scaled up and down practically instantaneously (which is why Amazon’s service offering is called the Elastic Compute Cloud). The ability to provide a separate instance of an application for each client also means SaaS vendors can offer greater customization without significantly adding to costs. Vendors can also serve a larger client base with rapidly changing capacity requirements.

Coming Soon?

There is speculation that Web 3.0 will make using multiple SaaS products together much simpler as interfacing between various programs becomes more commonplace. The popularity of Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) in software development has already moved web-based programs in this direction. SOA makes applications more likely to be interoperable as a basic design feature instead of an afterthought. This advance will create more flexibility for HR departments that want to use many Best of Breed niche products for the highest level of functionality in all areas of human capital management. HR might eventually have the option of ditching outdated suite software that contains applications that aren’t needed or used and simply cherry picking the best tool for each job. Of course, at Emerald Software Group, we’re already offering Universal Onboarding as a PaaS option for our clients. It’s a great place to start!