Most SaaS providers will be relying on open source within two years, according to the recent Gartner research.

No wonder, open source significantly cuts costs for SaaS vendors, although not for the users. The cost cuts are likely to “be used to increase profitability or invested in research and development.”

Open source will be used in the operating system, application server of at a database level and will make up 30 per cent of an application, said Gartner.

Robert DeSisto, vice president at Gartner, said: “The more SaaS vendors use open source in the technology stack, the lower their software acquisition cost becomes.”

Another factor in favor for SaaS expansion is the recent economic downturn, which directs users to a lower risk and costs solutions (provided by the SaaS market).

Well, that only makes SaaS vendors, like Salesforce.com (uses an open source database), Apatar (open source data integration provider), that have already adopted open source to a certain extent way ahead of the rest of the software market.