SaaS – the Modern Distribution Model that We All Need

This book will take you, the reader, through the full process of building a software-as-a-service (SaaS) application. But before we get our hands dirty, we’ll start with an introduction to the broad concepts of SaaS. The history of application development is not particularly long, but it has been eventful! We will look at the last 40 years of software engineering to see how we have arrived at this point, with SaaS emerging as the dominant paradigm, and we will consider why SaaS has emerged as such. There are benefits to businesses and teams of all sizes in utilizing SaaS.

Finally, we will cover the tools and techniques that you as a developer will learn to enable you to confidently solve real-world problems by building applications using the SaaS paradigm. This chapter will form an introduction to the topic. We’ll not deep dive into any specific skills (that will come later!). Rather, we will set the scene for the rest of this book, in which we will learn how to build, test, and release modern SaaS applications using the Microsoft tech stack.

This chapter covers the following main topics:

• What is SaaS?
• What other types of applications are there?
• Where did it all begin?
• Why is SaaS a popular choice for businesses large and small?
• Which tools are required to build SaaS apps?
• Which techniques will be used to build SaaS apps?
• How does this affect the development process?
• What to expect from this book
• How to assess and pay off technical debt

By the end of this chapter, you’ll have learned the definition of SaaS. You’ll have covered a brief history of application development, and you’ll have learned the tools and techniques that we will see as we progress through this book!