At the time when my recent “SaaSy Discussions” series was already being published, I had an update briefing and great discussion with Colleen Niven Smith, vice president of software-as-a-service (SaaS) initiatives at Progress Software. Smith and Progress Software’s findings on SaaS industry dynamics concur with my assertions that growth of SaaS-based offerings is expected to outpace traditional on-site enterprise applications business in the not-so-distant future.

Combined competitive, organizational, and technological factors are expected to fuel SaaS solution growth, and many industry analysts project the SaaS market to be in the range of USD$14 billion to USD$17 billion within the next three years. Indeed, as mentioned in my 2008 blog post on Progress Software’s SaaS forays, 20 percent of Progress Software’s independent software vendor (ISV) partners that leverage the Progress OpenEdge platform for SaaS applications saw their businesses grow by over 40 percent in 2008.

In addition, there has been a much higher market valuation lately of on-demand SaaS providers as compared to their on-premise-software peers. There are also more optimistic expectations about SaaS companies’ performances and long-term growth prospects as compared to traditional “perpetual license” application businesses. Read the rest of this entry »

Wow, how time flies and how many things have happened in the market these days to distract a market observer! Namely, only over a year after my SaaSy Discusions (Part I) and SaaSy Discussions (Part Ia) blog series, some time has at last become available for more discussions on the intriguing topic of software as a service (SaaS).

The title of this SaaSy discussions series might be somewhat deceiving, since the question might no longer be whether to go for SaaS or the on-demand computing deployment mode, but rather how to go about it for both vendors and users. Indeed, the current tough economic situation certainly has something to do with making this “go on-demand” decision a bit easier for both software providers and users. Read the rest of this entry »