IT Jungle:
SaaS Sales Up Smartly Despite (or Because Of) the Economy
Published: November 30, 2009
by Timothy Prickett Morgan
Buying applications and raw infrastructure as a service is getting a push globally thanks to the maturation of software and networking technologies (particularly improved Web interfaces and low-cost, high-speed Internet access) and a pull from companies who are trying to cut costs and only pay for what they use.
According to a recent report from Gartner, the company's market wizards expect that global software as a service (SaaS) sales will grow by 17.7 percent this year, to $7.5 billion. This market is a lot more than just Salesforce.com.
"The adoption of SaaS continues to grow and evolve within the enterprise application markets," explained Sharon Mertz, a research director at Gartner who put together the SaaS sales projections. "The composition of the worldwide SaaS landscape is evolving as vendors continue to extend regionally, increase penetration within existing accounts and 'greenfield' opportunities, and offer more vertical-specific solutions as part of their service portfolio or through partners."
The push in conjunction with partners has apparently been a key factor in driving growth. It is a lot easier for a software vendor and its partners to push a service with a set cost per user than a solution with a big upfront cost and financing headaches. No one wants to use cash for anything if they can avoid it.
The biggest chunk of SaaS sales is the content, communications, and collaboration segment, as you can see from the table below, followed up by customer relationship management software.
posted by: gqpartner
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