Trias Decentralized SaaS

Cloud computing is defined to be internet-based computing technology, and refers to services that are accessed directly over the internet. There are essentially three categories of cloud computing: IaaS (Infrastructure as a Service), which provides virtualized computing resources over the internet; PaaS (Platform as a Service), which allows users to develop, run and manage applications; and SaaS (Software as a Service), which is a web-based applications service.

The centralized cloud computing faces trust issues as the current solutions rely on the services of a centralized organization. As Trias is solving the ‘trust issue’ in cloud computing, it takes the current cloud infrastructure into the next generation by integrating with blockchain. In this paper, Trias' innovation of transforming SaaS to Decentralized SaaS (DSaaS) is the focus of the analysis.

SaaS has incorporated into the delivery strategies of many enterprise software providers and has thus become the spotlights of the venture capital industry because it provides functional business applications such as customer relationship management (CRM) and enterprise resourcing planning (ERP) without complicated deployment. Small companies can easily get accessible to SaaS without any barrier. It also has a recurring revenue model because it’s subscribed monthly/annually.

SaaS also faces a ‘centralized problem’. First is the data ownership issue. At present, when most of the services are provided by centralized organizations, the data and the value from the data analysis fall into their hands. It often occurs that the data owners and creators are not paid and the centralized service providers use the values of the data created during the interactions/services to increase high switch costs that expand to other business models, This is one of the reasons why the valuation of SaaS is often 10x higher than its revenue. A decentralized model can help in protecting the data ownership and makes sure that the value created can be distributed to the originators. Furthermore, it also tackles the problems of data privacy and leakages, and thus mitigates the clients’ reluctance of uploading data or rejecting the SaaS.

The second problem comes from the product-market fit. As the enterprises are always prudent with new products, It is difficult for a startup to find a strong market demand despite having an advanced technology product. They should focus on having an experienced sales team that can ensure enterprise adoption. Thus, innovations are struggling to find applications in the real world. Some of the startups are lucky enough to be bought by big and established giant companies in cloud computing, while some are barely sustaining. There are a few of them that take a long time to grow into giants. However, this issue may be resolved by allocating and aligning interests of software startups/software developers, and the distributors/service providers who can help in selling the products and offer services to enterprise clients. Since the latter has more experience and knowledge of the clients, they can choose a market-fit software in the beginning which makes the process productive.

Trias aims to bring DSaaS into reality by three efforts at the same time:

1) Developing its own DSaaS products and setting an example for future developments on MagCarta Layer;

2) Polishing the infrastructures of Leviatom and Prometh, and DSaaS development toolkits;

3) Building a network of decentralized but cooperating participants to ensure the deployment and applications of the DSaaS products. In this way, blockchain not only brings technical breakthroughs, but also liberates the current dilemmas of the SaaS market.