How do virtual appliances enhance the Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) model?
With virtual appliances, IT organizations can maintain their applications and data within a virtual appliance in their own data centers for peace of mind and security. Virtual appliances also have a more traditional fee structure, eliminating the risk of unpredictable storage, bandwidth, and per seat costs of SaaS. In addition, virtual appliances can be used as a delivery mechanism for any software on an IA-32 x86 platform, including custom built software. For Software Developers virtual appliances do not require expensive reengineering of the application to support multi-tenancy. Creation of a virtual appliance can often be integrated directly into an Software Developers build environment.