Saas comes of age

Software as a service is coming of age. And any CIO who hasn't adopted Saas into their portfolio is woefully behind the times. The trick is to spot the best uses of Saas to enhance such tasks as project management and internal collaboration. More than a third of small and large businesses will adopt software as a service (Saas) into their technology portfolio during the next year to help bolster activities such as project management and internal collaboration, according to report by THINKstrategies and the Cutter Consortium. About 80 percent of the 100 companies surveyed said they planned to adopt it in the next year.

Rebecca Wetteman, an analyst at Nucleus Research which does technology research, says, "If  IT wants to be in the conversation, they need to get ahead of the curve in presenting these to end users." She predicts that on-demand productivity apps such as Google Apps and Zoho will have a good year as they make inroads with customers looking to save money on expensive on-premise software for people who aren't power users. "Businesses might look at tiering their office apps, particularly as they look at the next version of Microsoft Office," she says.

For more on Saas:
- Check out this CIO Magazine Article