A recent Wall Street Research report stated that 83% of all companies expect to adopt SaaS (Software As A Service) technologies in the coming years. The take awake for me is that nearly every sector or market will eventually have a SaaS offering providing heavy competition to traditional offerings. A good question to ask is why? What are the driving forces of this accelerating trend? How close is your own industry to having competition cannibalized by disruptive SaaS companies? Are you the disrupted or interrupted?
From a recently published white paper on SaaS comes the following:
Top factors driving SaaS adoption by software vendors:
Customers are demanding SaaS applications
Client software is moving to a consumerized, HTML5 interface
Server software is moving to the Cloud
Software vendors are joining the stampede moving to SaaS
VARs and System Integrators are getting on board the SaaS movement
Most new software venture investments are concentrated in SaaS, mobile, big data, and social – others need not apply…
Software M&A is strongest for SaaS companies driving more software companies to become SaaS companies.
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So it is clear to me that SaaS solutions, dropping licensing costs of ownership or use are the future norm. Whether to buy, lease, or build remains and important question.
With all the attention on SaaS there is likely to be over investment in some sectors creating the opportunity for a bubble. However in most sectors, the frontier for technology improvements through SaaS are still in the emerging technology phase.
I suggest as with all investments of time and money, that business owners conduct a market-niche specific SaaS deep dive prior to significant investment in creating your own proprietary SaaS solutions as someone or some organization is likely pioneering the territory of SaaS and other cloud based services.
If you need help in conducting the deep dive, we at ePraxis are happy to help.