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.
I stumbled upon this article in NetworkWorld discussing the increasing adoption of Software as a Service practices all over the industry.
It states that the recent “Forrester survey of more than 1,000 IT decision-makers in North America and Europe found that 16% of enterprises had adopted SaaS as of 2007 – an increase from 12% the previous year but still a small minority.”
The article goes on saying that the “actual enterprise adoption of SaaS might be much higher, though, because business units often deploy hosted applications on their own, sometimes seeing it as a way to free themselves from relying on IT.”
The number of IT executives who have at least some interest in hosted software indicate to Herbert that IT involvement in SaaS projects is poised for a big increase.
The hosted software market is growing more mature, with extensive customization and integration into an enterprise’s internal systems. And whereas SaaS applications are typically for general business tasks like human resources, there are now hosted applications designed specifically to help IT staffers manage an enterprise’s technology.
The article is available over here.
In this world of changing business requirements, flexibility is the key to providing a positive customer experience and, in the long run, succeeding. Flexibility, however, is a complicated deal. Not all companies have the power, time and resources to constantly readapt to the new OC’s, new security measures, new software, new systems, updated and improved work strategies… if you spend all your time on these processes (and they do have the potential to take ALL of your time), who’s gonna do business for you?
This is precisely the reason why the SaaS market has exploded in the recent years and why companies increasingly put their trust along with their confidential data into the hands of outside service providers, rather than in those of their in-house staff.
Google’s recent survey on “message security and compliance”, involving 575 IT professionals, showed that the majority of respondents (53%) believe that “IT holds ultimate responsibility for their organization’s communications security and compliance. They also realize that organizations need to have policies and mechanisms in place to help achieve this.”
The survey confirmed the growing need for software-as-a-service (SaaS), “which is taking the place of in-house solutions that tend to require significant internal resources to maintain. The results suggest that one reason SaaS is gaining momentum is that the problems it solves are top-of-mind for IT departments, such as spending too much time or money on troubleshooting and maintenance.”
“By using SaaS service providers, organizations can offload capacity challenges, get real-time updates, and benefit from the economies of scale of a large network.”
