Site Application vs SaaS Application

For most applications of the 'Shared Web Server' provisioning type there are two ways of selling them:

  • Sell application as resource based on resource class 'Site Application'
  • Sell application as resource based on resource class 'Application'

With the first scenario customer has to have subscription with necessary web hosting resources (IIS or Apache webspace, diskspace, traffic, FTP access and so on) and (if application requires database) database resources. When installing application (e.g. Wordpress) it is being installed on customer's webspace.

To sell APS applications as Site Applications typical POA Service Template must include the following resources:

  • Webspace (IIS or Apache)
  • Diskspace
  • Traffic
  • DNS Hosting
  • FTP access (optionally)
  • APS application resource (based on Site Application resource class)

The second scenario is SaaS (Software as a Service) model of selling APS applications. In this case customer only subscribes to application. POA will still create webspace, website and database if necessary, however, in this case all these entities will belong to the Provider account and customer will have no possibility to change webspace settings or manage it somehow. Customer only purchases application and they will be able to manage application only.

With this model POA Service Template only has to include the following resources:

  • APS application resource (based on Application resource class)
  • DNS Hosting (for a customer to be able to add domain to install application to)

In this case POA Service Template does not have to include any web hosting resources such as webspace, diskspace and traffic. This is the main difference between two models of selling APS applications in Parallels Automation.

For more details on how to configure resources, attributes and service templates, refer to the 'POA Application Hosting Deployment Guide' or to the deployment documentation of a particular application.

See the main KB article #115664 APS: General information, Best Practices and Troubleshooting for more information.

Please note that "APS site applications" and "Hosted APS applications" license items are linked to "Site Application" and "Application" resource classes respectively.

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