SaaS or On-Premise solutions for digital workplace management — what’s best?

‍A centralized smart building solution is the right move

Office buildings have undergone profound changes in recent years, driven by the need to rationalize real estate costs. Optimizing occupancy rates in a context of widespread hybrid work while improving employee experience has become a key challenge for many facility managers.

From an IT perspective, the primary challenge of a connected building is system consolidation and deployment of a robust software infrastructure. The Smart Building is a solution favored by real estate players and their occupants. It allows employees to complete their entire journey using only their smartphone. However, the way corporate headquarters are using technology often looks like a patchwork of different solutions, with a lack of a cohesive vision.

It's not rare to find within the same building:

• an app for food services,
• a booking platform for workstations and meeting rooms,
• a ticketing tool for incident reporting and support requests,
• an app to browse fitness and wellness offerings,
• a portal to order services and products available from the concierge,
• non-integrated access control systems, etc.

However, in practice, the offering lacks comprehensive accessibility, characterized by limited overall visibility, numerous apps, and too many passwords. This fragmentation generates several technical and financial issues: multiple license costs (each solution carries its own subscription or license cost), integration complexity (absence of unified SSO), data silos (inability to have a consolidated view of space utilization), dispersed maintenance (multiple contractual relationships and support), degraded user experience (low adoption rates, excessive IT support requests)...

A unified smart office platform solves these issues by centralizing:

• daily activities and services (booking a room or fitness class, ordering meals or dry cleaning, payment for services, click & collect for marketplace items, visitor announcements by reception or package arrivals),
• reception (virtual badge, mapping, access to useful documents and contacts),
• identity management (SSO via AD/Azure AD, LDAP or SAML),
• occupancy data (consolidated information for space management),
• integrations (unified API to connect existing business systems),
• support (single entry point for employee requests, incident reporting and tracking).

What technical criteria to select the right digital workplace app?

For IT and technical teams, choosing a Smart Building architecture should be based on objective criteria:

Architecture and performance

Examine the platform's scalability in terms of supported users, availability guaranteed by uptime SLAs, as well as response times and API performance. The choice between cloud-native or monolithic architecture will directly influence these aspects.

Security and compliance

The solution must comply with GDPR with appropriate data hosting, have recognized certifications such as ISO 27001 or SOC 2, and offer robust authentication and authorization management. Backup and restore policies must also be clearly defined.

Technical integrations

Technical integration capabilities determine deployment fluidity. Well-documented REST APIs facilitate connection to existing systems, while native connectors to enterprise tools (Microsoft 365, Google Workspace) simplify adoption. Integration with access control and IoT systems, as well as webhook availability to automate workflows, enhance orchestration possibilities.

Maintenance and scalability

To ensure investment sustainability, it's important to analyze the update frequency and process, API backward compatibility, as well as the quality of technical support and vendor assistance. Comprehensive technical documentation and an active developer community are valuable assets.

TCO and economic model

Finally, the TCO (Total Cost of Ownership) and economic model should be evaluated over a 3 to 5-year perspective, integrating not only license costs but also IT resources needed for operations and hidden costs related to integrations, training, and future developments.

So, SaaS or on-prem software: which option is best suited for a headquarters building?

Choosing between SaaS and On-Prem software for your smart office

Two architectures compete technically for transforming an asset into a digital workplace — connected and service-oriented office building:

• SaaS (Software as a Service) solutions, with single-tenant or multi-tenant cloud architecture, are usable online through a subscription. These turnkey platforms enable rapid deployment without physical installation. Technical maintenance, security updates, and visual and functional upgrades are included in the subscription.
• On-premise software (often abbreviated as on-prem), installed and run directly on the company's internal servers, is highly customizable with a high initial investment. Ideal for companies requiring complete control of their data, these solutions are typically managed by internal IT teams. Operating and maintaining these custom solutions must be performed and handled by the company or outsourced to a service provider.

Witco's technical teams have studied these Smart Building infrastructures in detail, and you'll find their recommendations below.

SaaS solution — Off-the-shelf app with shared costs

SaaS architecture is based on sharing development and infrastructure costs among multiple clients. This multi-tenant approach can reduce TCO by 5 to 10 times compared to custom development.

Technical advantages of a SaaS architecture:

• Infrastructure and operations: the vendor handles cloud hosting on major platforms (AWS, Azure, GCP) with automatic scalability that adapts to load. Monitoring and incident management operate continuously 24/7, while uptime SLAs exceeding 99.9% are contractually guaranteed. The architecture natively integrates disaster recovery and a business continuity plan.
• Security and compliance: the vendor has a dedicated security team managing regular audits and certifications. Security updates are applied automatically, and GDPR compliance is built in from the design phase. Hosting in France or the European Union remains available for organizations with localization requirements.
• Continuous evolution: frequent delivery of new features or improvements brings technological innovation without requiring internal projects. Each client benefits from shared feedback and regularly enriched APIs, without having to manage specific versions to maintain.
• Very rapid deployment: hosted in the cloud, the application can typically be deployed in 4 to 8 weeks, versus 6 to 18 months for custom development commissioned from an agency. The approach favors configuration over development, requires minimal IT resources, and facilitates reversibility.
• Predictable economic model: the monthly or annual cost per user remains fixed, avoiding heavy upfront investment. This OPEX rather than CAPEX logic includes upgrades at no extra cost and significantly reduces IT resources to dedicate to the project.

IT limitations:

The standardization inherent to SaaS can be problematic in certain contexts:

• limited customization of the interface and workflows,
• dependence on the vendor's product roadmap,
• integrations sometimes limited to standard connectors,
• less control over infrastructure and data,
• risk of vendor lock-in.

However, the standard nature of such a solution represents a significant obstacle for many clients and their headquarters. More than just a software solution, the Smart Building application is also the showcase for the building and/or company culture, so it cannot be identical to that of other organizations.

On-prem model — Complete control with long-term commitments

Choosing a custom on-prem architecture offers complete control of the solution and strong customization. This approach is particularly suited to organizations with very specific needs, strict sovereignty constraints, or solid internal technical expertise.

Technical and financial reality

When a company entrusts a development agency with designing its custom Smart Building platform from scratch, the initial investment ranges from $300K to $800K, depending on the functional scope. The project requires 6 to 18 months of development with strong involvement from internal IT teams (project management, architecture, security, infrastructure).

This approach involves substantial recurring commitments that must be anticipated in the IT strategy: application maintenance represents at least 15 to 20% of the initial development cost per year, infrastructure and hosting require dedicated resources (servers, databases, CDN, load balancing, monitoring), each new feature requires a specific development project, security and dependency updates must be planned regularly, and L2/L3 application support must be sized appropriately.

Technical and organizational vigilance aspects

Certain aspects deserve particular attention over time. First of all, the rapid technological evolution of frameworks and libraries requires regular monitoring and updates to avoid obsolescence. Service continuity relies on maintaining technical skills, ideally beyond the initial provider. Architecture, as well as budget, must be designed from the outset with a scalability vision to support growth and the implementation of new features. Finally, platform security depends directly on the team's ability to maintain active monitoring.

When to favor this approach?

The on-prem model is relevant when functional needs are truly differentiating and impossible to satisfy with a standard solution, when the company has an IT team sized to ensure operational maintenance, or when regulatory or sovereignty constraints require it. For other cases, particularly when the smart office is not core to the company's business, CIOs now favor SaaS solutions that allow IT resources to be concentrated on high-value business projects.

Customizable SaaS model — Optimal technical balance for digital workplaces

Faced with the respective limitations of pure SaaS and on-prem models, a third way has emerged: SaaS platforms with strong customization capabilities. This hybrid approach combines the technical advantages of SaaS (infrastructure, maintenance, evolution) with the flexibility needed for headquarters' specific requirements.

With this model, clients have an evolving tool while benefiting from cost sharing and offering their occupants a unique experience. Customization capabilities are extensive:

• user interface: complete customization (branding, colors, logos),
• business workflows: advanced configuration via configurable business rules,
• integrations: documented REST APIs and webhooks for connection to any third-party system,
• data model: custom fields and data model extensions.

This model meets CIOs' technical requirements while enabling business units to have a differentiating solution. The building becomes a unique digital workplace. It supports the company's brand image and contributes to creating a cohesive community.

Whether the client chooses to use the solution in multi-tenant or single-tenant SaaS mode, they benefit from an optimal solution that offers the best balance between technical performance, financial control, and innovation capacity.