Tuesday, 13 May 2008

SaaS Gaining Ground in Business Deployments

More current business management application deployments are run in-house on traditional, installed licenses, but with new implementations, software-as-a-service (SaaS) is gaining ground, reports In-Stat.

Over the next 12 months, of the number of US firms initially implementing a business management application such as CRM (customer relationship management), ERP (enterprise resource planning), etc, the percentage implementing a SaaS solution will approach the percentage of firms deploying traditional licenses in that market, the high-tech market research firm says.

Along with gauging demand for business management applications (delivered as a service, In-Stat also looked at demand for Microsoft Office-esque productivity applications delivered as a service. While generally targeting smaller offices with often basic computing needs, office productivity applications delivered as a service are also beginning to gain some traction in larger firms. Roughly 15% of 100+-employee firms who currently use traditional, installed office productivity applications indicated in an In-Stat survey that they plan to implement or try a hosted model in the next 12 months.

Recent research by In-Stat also found the following:

• Accessibility to applications by remote or mobile workers is an important benefit to current SaaS users as well as those who are interested in SaaS.

• The main inhibitors to SaaS adoption are security concerns for larger firms and a lack of perceived TCO benefits for smaller firms.

• Four out of five hosted productivity application users would recommend using them to colleagues and plan to use them as much or more in the future.