Adlib Technology as SaaS: Moving Towards the Cloud

In this day and age when many businesses are moving towards (or thinking about) cloud computing, we can say that Adlib is part of that movement – and has been for a while now. There is a lot written about what cloud computing is and what it isn’t.

One of the most common themes is the offering of ‘something’ as a service. This includes Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS), Platform as a Service (PaaS), and Software as a Service (SaaS).

SaaS is one of our business models for selling our PDF conversion, recognition and publishing solutions to organizations that act as application service providers (ASPs) or “service bureaus” – charging their customers for processing documents in some cool and novel way.

We enable these ASPs to be successful by offering a value-added service to their customers, who benefit by not having to invest in software licenses, hardware and ongoing maintenance to get a business service they really need.

Examples of “Service Bureaus”

For example, a large European national post office uses Adlib Express in order to provide an inexpensive, online alternative to paper registered letters, in paper format. The e-registered letter service lets the business or consumer log on to the post’s web site and send electronic documents that are converted to PDF for archival, printed, enveloped and delivered by the post office as if it were regular registered mail.

Another example is a leading American publishing company that sells a service that enables organizations to assemble their board books online and then disseminate the agenda, minutes and supporting documentation to its Board of Directors as a single, bookmarked, PDF complete with table of contents. This online process replaces the very time-consuming process of gathering paper documents from various contributors, collating them, adding addendums, printing and distributing binders by courier in time for board meetings.

Adlib’s business is growing in the area of selling to ‘service bureaus’ and ASPs. Many of our partners are offering their software and services solely in an online environment, and the others are looking to augment their offering with a SaaS business model, too – as our whole industry moves towards the SaaS concept of “we’ll host it and maintain it – you pay for what you use.”