Updated: Friday, 16 July 2021 at 10:05AM
Author: Eric Vasbinder
There exists a number of questions that our customers have about Viewpoint's cloud solutions. One that is frequently encountered is regarding the cloud model that Viewpoint's cloud solutions use. Specifically, confusion sometimes exists around whether or not Viewpoint's cloud solutions are "true Software as a Service (SaaS)" or if they are instead merely hosting or Infrastructure as a Service (SaaS). Viewpoint has significant history with both approaches, so this is the source for some of the confusion in question.
Many of Viewpoint's solutions have been available consistently as SaaS solutions from the beginning, including Viewpoint for Projects, Viewpoint FieldView, and others. Conversely, ERP products, due to their extensive and complex nature, have moved more slowly into the SaaS universe. In the past, prior to 2016, Viewpoint's approach to Vista ERP cloud was an IaaS approach, with perpetually sold software being hosted and made available through a full IT server and workstation outsourcing solution known as Viewpoint for Cloud (VFC). VFC provided full desktop virtualization to customers desiring to uplift client workstations and servers from their internal infrastructure. However, the future was calling: moving into late 2016, Viewpoint began to invest heavily in a different, more defined approach.
With the release of Viewpoint Enterprise Cloud (VEC) on 1 June 2017, Viewpoint began to enter the realm of SaaS offerings for Vista ERP Cloud. VEC was a powerful solution where Viewpoint provided the hosting, management, maintenance, control and more for Vista, as well as access to other, cloud-only solutions such as Viewpoint Team Project Management, Viewpoint FieldView, and Viewpoint Search. VEC was also priced on a subscription basis for existing customers, including both maintenance and hosting in the same subscription, unlike VFC and other, previous Vista ERP cloud solutions from Viewpoint. VEC was not our end destination, but rather was a stepping stone to even greater things.
Though VEC was nearly a SaaS solution from a commercial perspective, there were a number of improvements that could still be made. For example, customers were still desiring to "buy in" to the environment on a subscription from the beginning. Vista SaaS, made available in late 2018, was our next step into the fully modern, SaaS-based world. This variant of VEC provided a way for customers who did not want to purchase Vista on a perpetual basis to experience cloud availability of Vista in a fully subscription-based model. Yet, there was still more to do.
From a technical perspective, our focus until 2019 was to expose Vista and other, related applications (e.g. MS Office) to end users via RDP Published applications, rather than remote, HTTPS-connected clients or web browsers. Enter Viewpoint One. Viewpoint One was intended from the beginning to be a fully SaaS-based solution that exposed ERP solutions, project management tools, collaboration capabilities, and reporting and analytics as either HTTPS-connected rich clients on local workstations or via web browsers, driven by a flexible, entirely subscription-based commercial model. That Viewpoint One vision is here, now.
Viewpoint's offerings today are fully cloud-based to provide integrated, best of breed solutions for project management, ERP, reporting, and more to our construction customers. Viewpoint One is a highly secure, reliable subscription-based offering of these construction solutions. Let's take a look at some of the specific characteristics of Viewpoint One:
Our cloud solutions are either available as HTTPS-connected Windows rich client applications (Vista Remote Link / VRL), like Microsoft Office 365, or as web browser-based solutions.
Viewpoint has always taken the approach of allowing the right tool for the job to be brought to bear on the needs of the construction industry. This means that various workflows in project management, ERP, and reporting are available via the best mechanism for that task. For example, in the case of collaborative project management where interactivity and dispersed availability are critical, we make use of web browser based experiences. Conversely, in the case of complex, customizable ERP experiences for power users, a rich client experience connected to the ERP via HTTPS is important in order to enable activities such as direct integration client-side applications; very similar to Microsoft Outlook's usage with Microsoft Office 365.
As you can imagine, the safety and security of customer data is extremely important to the Viewpoint team. This goes doubly for ERPs, who are, in effect, the "keys to the kingdom". Thus, in areas where the security of data is paramount, such as ERP, Viewpoint adopts a security best practice that isolates customers from each other in our cloud at layer 2, dramatically reducing the risk that any issues that occur with a specific customer environment do not "bleed over" to another customer.
One of the advantages of this approach is its ability to support our SOC 2, Type 2 advanced security certification, a rare accomplishment in the construction cloud industry.
As such, using a single tenant environment for each customer's ERP does not mean that our cloud is merely hosting, but rather that Viewpoint has a substantial level of concern and awareness of how to properly mitigate the significant security risks that are present in today's world.
Viewpoint One provides an extensive set of capabilities for our customers, ensuring that the effort of utilizing powerful construction solutions is no longer given to customers; lifting the burden of management, maintenance, upgrades, infrastructure licensing, security, and business availability.
Much of the Viewpoint One portfolio of products is not available to customers using Viewpoint solutions on-premise:
Viewpoint Analytics
Viewpoint Team Project Management
Viewpoint Search
In addition, much of the value of many Viewpoint solutions is only realized when using these solutions in the Viewpoint One cloud, as they were intended, including our HR Portal, Financial Controls, Field Management, Vista Remote Link (VRL), and others.
Viewpoint One is a true SaaS-based solution with a subscription pricing model designed to enable customers from contractors just starting out to the largest, publicly traded companies to experience the power of Viewpoint's solutions in the construction industry.
As you can see from the above, Viewpoint One is a truly SaaS-based solution. The latest iteration of Viewpoint's cloud offerings, Viewpoint One builds on a decades-long legacy of cloud offerings, combining the best of Viewpoint solutions with the modern world.