In short
SaaS is software you do not buy and install but rent and use through a browser. The vendor runs the servers, the updates and the backups. Microsoft 365 and Salesforce are SaaS. What actually changes is not the price — it is who carries responsibility for keeping the thing running.
What the switch really changes
A one-off investment becomes a running cost. That is comfortable for the books and double-edged for the business: five subscriptions at CHF 30 per person per month come to CHF 18'000 a year across ten people — a figure that would have been noticed as a single licence purchase and often is not as a monthly debit.
The second change is control. With bought software you decide when to upgrade. With SaaS the vendor decides — including the interface changes your team finds on Monday morning.
The question that comes before the subscription
Who owns the data, and how do you get out? A vendor without a complete export is not a tool, it is a dependency. That never shows up at rollout. It shows up at the switch — exactly when there is no time for it.
Checkable in ten minutes: is there an export in an open format, and is it included in the tier you actually pay for? If export is an enterprise feature, the answer is no.
Swiss data residency
For most SMEs, server location is not a disqualifier but a documentation duty: the revised Data Protection Act requires disclosure abroad to be named and safeguarded. With US vendors that usually runs through standard contractual clauses.
It gets stricter the moment sensitive data is involved — health data, biometric data, data on criminal proceedings. There, the question of which data centre applies stops being a formality.
How we handle it
We rarely argue for custom software where a standard product fits — and rarely for one subscription where three already do the same job. The most common finding in an inventory is not missing software but the same task spread across three tools.
Where a standard product does ninety percent and the missing ten percent define the workflow, we build the ten percent as an integration or tool, not the whole product again.
Related terms
A term in your quote that nobody explained?
In a strategy call we translate the offer in front of you — even when it did not come from us.