Technology

Software as a Service (SaaS)

Current Trends of SaaS Usage
 
The SaaS usage worldwide shows an increasing growth pattern.  
 
As per Gartner, the IT spending on SaaS in Asia Pacific is forecast to grow 8.3 percent in 2009 to reach US$585.7 billion. The use of SaaS solutions is maturing, with more than 40% of organizations using SaaS for more than three years. Nearly 90% of organizations expect to maintain or grow their usage of SaaS, with more than one-third transitioning from on-premises to SaaS. Key drivers of the transition include total cost of ownership and unmet performance expectations. Most companies still do not have policies governing the evaluation and use of SaaS, which is one of the serious bottle - necks of the proliferation.
 
Rise and Rise of SaaS
 
SaaS popularity has been increasing as a platform as a service grows; however the adoption varies between and within markets. Growth is most significant in SMEs in the areas characterized by horizontal applications with common processes, among distributed virtual workforce teams and within Web 2.0 initiatives. As the time passes the vendors offer more vertical-specific solutions as part of their service portfolio or through partners. The growing cyber security threats have suddenly been very instrumental in promoting the SaaS model of delivery, as is evident by the fact that many e-mail security firms ell 60 percent of its software via SaaS and 40 percent on appliances.
As per Gartner's survey, the SaaS usage has been increasing every year and the graph of 'How long have the organisations been using SaaS' clearly indicates a growing acceptability of the same.
 
The top motivation of SaaS usage has been the more cost - effective Total cost of ownership (TCO) followed by non - premise solution and faster to deploy.
 
The major application areas of SaaS in SMEs is 
 
1. Financials
2. Sales
3. Email
4. Expense management
5. Customer Relationship management
6. Marketing
7. HR Management
8. Supply Chain management
9. Recruitment
10. Souring and procurement
11. Warehouse management
12. Travel & Transportation
13. Web conferencing
 
The most popular SAAS applications amongst the SMEs are Accounting, Email and Sales. With almost 40-50% SMEs already use them and nearly 30% planning to use in next one year.
 
Accounting is the most-popular category, they tend to be separate from other systems within the business and are more often used by small businesses (rather than midsize and large businesses) and their accountants for auditing purposes.
 
E-mail, on the other hand, is a solution that can cross borders more easily and has been available to home/inidual users for a number of years, including Hotmail, Yahoo and Gmail. Consequently, it is not surprising to see e-mail as a popular SaaS application within the business sector.
 
Sales force automation is the third-most-popular application currently being consumed via SaaS by SMEs. Sales force automation has garnered much press attention in recent years from high-profile vendors such as salesforce.com. Similar to e-mail, sales automation applications can cross borders with little difficulty and have seen elevated adoption across the size-of-business spectrum. 
 
SaaS would be deployed in most SMEs for at least one Enterprise application (ERP, SCM, CRM, or content, communications and collaboration), in a year's time as per industry predictions.
Some of the Popular 
SaaS Solutions
 
Salesforce.com has been the most successful on-demand software vendors. The product is a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) application in the area of automating sales organizations and processes. That area has been extremely good to the company, and is likely to help it become the first on-demand application service provider with $1 billion in annual revenues. 
Website: www.salesforce.com
 
WebEx is an easy way to exchange ideas and information with anyone, anywhere.It combines real-time desktop sharing with phone conferencing so everyone sees the same thing as you talk. It's far more productive than emailing files then struggling to get everyone on the same page in a phone conference. And, many times it eliminates the need for people to travel and meet on site. It is one of the most popular collaboration SaaS application.
Website:www.webex.com 
 
Zoho is an Indian SaaS company launched in 2005 that offers a wide range of online software. They offer everything from personal productivity apps such as e-mail, word processing, spreadsheet, wiki software; to business systems such as customer relationship management. Zoho has over 20 productivity and collaboration apps, all for prices are dirt- cheap.
Website: www.zoho.com