SaaS allows organizations to launch software for business functions almost immediately, while maintaining the ability to customize the software in the future for their specific business needs. With a pricing model based on monthly user fees, the initial cost of entry for an organization to launch a new software application is often much lower.
More than half of Fortune 500 and other large enterprises expect to spend more than previously or the same on software-as-a-service (SaaS) solutions for their organization in the future. More than seven out of 10 (73 percent) of the 100 executives interviewed in a survey conducted by Kelton Research stated their enterprise has adopted SaaS or plans to adopt SaaS within the next 18 months.
The survey also indicated that confidence in SaaS solutions in the largest global enterprises is gaining ground. The survey was commissioned by Acumen Solutions, a business and technology consulting firm. Among the findings in the survey are:
* Subscription costs? No big deal. Just more than one in five (21 percent) execs say the subscription fees are an issue vs. the old model of a one-time cost that depreciated over time.
* They are budgeting for it. A majority (55 percent) plan to spend the same amount of money-if not more-on their on-demand software in the future.
Large enterprises, such as global financial institutions or multinational telecommunications companies, have invested heavily in technology over the past decade to support software implementations from "cradle to grave." Expensive software licenses, months of development time to create customized applications, quality assurance testing, and then ongoing maintenance and hosting of business applications involve millions of dollars and a large part of their ongoing budget expenditure every year. Championed by such companies as Salesforce.com, WebEx, Oracle and Google, SaaS delivers services on demand over the Internet on a subscription basis.
SaaS allows organizations to launch software for business functions almost immediately, while maintaining the ability to customize the software in the future for their specific business needs. With a pricing model based on monthly user fees, the initial cost of entry for an organization to launch a new software application is often significantly...
