SaaS: Beyond the Tipping Point

A new report explores three "waves" of adoption, key market challenges and planning positions for the next wave of SaaS evolution.

By Bill McNee, Saugatuck Technology

SaaS has already entered the second of three successive, growing waves of adoption, delivery and robustness - even as many user and vendor organizations still struggle to understand the impacts of SaaS on their business, their customers, and markets in general. The third, and largest wave, is now building on the horizon - as SaaS continues to evolve toward becoming a platform for mission-critical application workloads.

While the pace of growth and change has been fast, longer-term success with SaaS will require that users and vendors rethink how business software deployment strategies and architectures will evolve so as to fully understand the impacts of this new delivery and licensing approach. Failure to ride the SaaS waves successfully - i.e., to understand and effectively manage SaaS - could result in user enterprises being swamped by exploding demand, and outflanked by more SaaS-savvy competitors.

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The SandHill.com Blog wants your opinions. Send your thoughts on the enterprise software industry to editor@sandhill.com and we’ll publish them in our blog.

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All videos and podcasts from the general sessions of Software 2007 and the Innovation Showcase theatre are online now. Don’t miss the lively panels – the CIO panel, the innovation panel and “Communities and Corporations” panel. Visit the Software 2007 post-conference site and download the latest strategic insight from the software industry’s leading executives.

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