CHRIS: But fundamentally, every single business will have different customization needs. Some of our clients want to be able to massively extend the platform and turn on advanced specific mobile applications that make it easy for auctions to be created by the sellers. And they're very specific to their industry. The list really goes on. And so as you grow your business and as you're providing more value, how can the platform that you're working with enable that. What you ideally are looking for is the ability to also customize as it goes.
This is a major downside mechanically of SaaS. SaaS has a lot of capability for off-the-shelf commoditized offering, but you can almost think of SaaS as like a Toyota or a Lexus. They're great vehicles, but they just have a certain number of variables and certain configurations that you can implement. Whenever you work with a custom car manufacturer like a Ferrari, for example, and then you cater that particular vehicle, you're going to get a much more performant vehicle, a much more highly tuned vehicle, and it's going to be completely customized.
If you find the right software vendor, a software vendor like Clarity, we're doing these projects all the time. We're constantly upgrading our platforms, so, just like a SaaS offering, you're going to be able to take advantage of constant updates and changes that are improving things, constant recommendations from our work in the auction industry, in the online auction space. And then you'll also be able to take advantage of this customized ability that's built in.
RON: Confusion [occurs] when they start talking about single-tenancy versus multi-tenancy. They think, “I have to have multi-tenancy, so I have to have SaaS .” And that's not really true. Its single-tenancy means that I have my own installation of the software, but when I install the software, it can be multiple tenant, right?
So like Chase.com, they have their own software that they built, but they've got millions of people logging in. And just like you can have your own single-tenant installation of auction software, but yet have millions of sellers and millions of auctions running, and it is SaaS-based and installed in the cloud. So people get really confused about this. “Well, I have to have SaaS because it has to be multi-tenant,” but yet they can still have a single tenant installation for their SaaS-based multi-tenant auction platform.
CHRIS: That's right. And this is fundamentally something that we recommend, if you're really looking to build a long-term solution that's catered and matches what your business needs for your clients, for your end users. This is absolutely critical, and it can be a non-starter for pretty much any client that we've worked with over the last sixteen years, if they get stuck working with a multi-tenant SaaS-based type of solution, or even a poorly supported single tenancy type of model.
This ends up putting them into a limiting position where they cannot customize and cater everything as they scale. And fundamentally that ends up costing more than the benefits of having a low-cost commoditized solution. So there is a cost-benefit analysis that you're going to want to do when you're looking at the catering and the customization that you can do with a single-tenancy type of model, one that’s getting constant updates and upgrades to it.
RON: I agree. Well, I think that about covers it, unless there's anything else you want to tie off at the end there. I appreciate everybody joining us today in this installment. Got another one coming up soon. Really look forward to seeing you all. Thanks, Chris. Appreciate it.
CHRIS: Thanks, Ron. I'm looking forward to the next one as well. Bye for now.