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
Jun. 28, 2007
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.
At the Tipping Point
This is one of the important conclusions of Saugatuck's latest research report, Three Waves of Change: SaaS Beyond the Tipping Point (SSR-342, 3May07). This SandHill.com op-ed highlights some of the key findings and conclusions from the 34-page report, including:
Saugatuck began presenting data and analysis from our most recent SaaS research initiative regarding the rapid growth of SaaS deployment and adoption in early March, 2007.
As Strategic Perspective SaaS Adoption Tsunami: Redefining Software and Services (MKT-331, 27March07), highlighted, SaaS adoption is exploding across enterprises of all sizes, industries and geographies worldwide - indicating that SaaS is both a core disruptive technology and a business services phenomenon.
The critical questions now are:
While overall SaaS adoption (of one or more SaaS applications) has grown from 11 percent in 2006 to 26 percent in 2007 (see Figure 1 - and for more detail, read SaaS Adoption: Skyrocketing on All Cylinders, RA-332, 28Mar07) - adoption has also grown to the point where mission-critical SaaS is now on the agenda for both SMBs and Large Enterprises. In fact, the number of enterprises of all sizes planning to deploy mission-critical SaaS over time jumped from 18 percent to 49 percent from 2006 to 2007.
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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.
At the Tipping Point
This is one of the important conclusions of Saugatuck's latest research report, Three Waves of Change: SaaS Beyond the Tipping Point (SSR-342, 3May07). This SandHill.com op-ed highlights some of the key findings and conclusions from the 34-page report, including:
- Saugatuck's three-wave SaaS evolution framework and roadmap;
- The most influential market phenomena to emerge within that framework - SaaS Integration Platforms (SIPs), SaaS ecosystems and marketplaces, and the shift toward business services; and
- Recommendations of what to expect and what to do - including the effects of user and vendor business transformation resulting from the rapid pace of SaaS evolution.
Saugatuck began presenting data and analysis from our most recent SaaS research initiative regarding the rapid growth of SaaS deployment and adoption in early March, 2007.
As Strategic Perspective SaaS Adoption Tsunami: Redefining Software and Services (MKT-331, 27March07), highlighted, SaaS adoption is exploding across enterprises of all sizes, industries and geographies worldwide - indicating that SaaS is both a core disruptive technology and a business services phenomenon.
The critical questions now are:
- How will SaaS transform IT and business - for user and vendor enterprises?
- What will be the things to watch for in the next major wave of SaaS?
- How will this SaaS tsunami impact the way we do business in the future?
While overall SaaS adoption (of one or more SaaS applications) has grown from 11 percent in 2006 to 26 percent in 2007 (see Figure 1 - and for more detail, read SaaS Adoption: Skyrocketing on All Cylinders, RA-332, 28Mar07) - adoption has also grown to the point where mission-critical SaaS is now on the agenda for both SMBs and Large Enterprises. In fact, the number of enterprises of all sizes planning to deploy mission-critical SaaS over time jumped from 18 percent to 49 percent from 2006 to 2007.
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