THINKstrategies’ fourth annual Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) customer survey, in conjunction with Cutter Consortium, revealed that 63% of the responding organizations are using a SaaS solution, almost double the 32% who were using SaaS solutions in 2007!

Over the past four years, THINKstrategies and Cutter have been charting the growth of the SaaS market with a series of yearly customer surveys. Our surveys were the first to find widespread interest and substantial adoption of SaaS in 2005.

In 2006, we began to see businesses of all sizes adopting SaaS solutions specifically designed to meet their vertical market needs, as well as their horizontal application requirements.

In 2007, we found customers were beginning to examine the platform capabilities of SaaS vendors as they sought to identify those vendors that could serve as strategic sources for their SaaS requirements. We also found growing acceptance of SaaS solutions … Read More »

One of the topics which leading Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) vendors and industry analysts are most vehement about is that software vendors cannot survive and succeed supporting a ‘hybrid’ model.

This issue arises every time an incumbent software vendor–my definition of a “ISV”–rolls out a SaaS solution while also trying to sustain its legacy, on-premise application. There are plenty of impediments to success in this balancing act across the entire lifecycle of a product extending from software development and delivery to sales and support. These technological and organizational challenges are major obstacles to success for ISVs trying to keep pace with the SaaS movement.

However, despite growing interest and adoption of SaaS as well as other ‘cloud’ computing alternatives among organizations of all sizes, many IT and business decision-makers continue to feel that they must make an ‘either/or’ judgement when it comes to on-premise … Read More »

I had the privilege of being a columnist for the Web Hosting Industry Review (WHIR) for nearly three years from its inception in 2004 to mid-2007. (Click here to read these columns.) During that time only a handful of hosting companies saw the potential of the rapidly evolving Software-as-a-Service (SaaS).

The majority of those hosting companies who saw the SaaS market opportunity primarily focused on pushing their managed services and co-location capabilities. OpSource was the first to recognize a broader set of business opportunities and became a thought-leader in the industry offering a wider array of services, augmented by set of third-party technologies.

Other hosting companies may have been generating greater revenues from independent software vendors (ISVs), but didn’t pursue the broader array of business opportunities associated with SaaS. As a result, OpSource won the lion share of industry attention and ‘mindshare’.

Now … Read More »