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Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) is often touted by SaaS providers and others as a key competitive advantage for small and mid-sized businesses (SMBs) worldwide. And recent survey data from Saugatuck Technology does indicate that the most aggressive adopters of SaaS in most markets are found within SMB ranks. Unfortunately for SaaS providers, Saugatuck's research also shows that providers' approaches and offerings too often fail to resonate with SMB executives. Meanwhile, SMB executives are increasingly caught in a pattern of aggressive SaaS adoption activity without strategic or tactical plans.

As a result, many if not most SMBs today could soon face expensive, and even prohibitive, integration requirements to link disparate SaaS solutions together and with on-premise systems. But an emerging generation of SMBs are more likely to use SaaS - and its close cousin, cloud computing - to cost-effectively outpace their peers.

These are among the key conclusions that Saugatuck examines in its' first-ever research study on SaaS in small and mid-sized businesses. The study, titled Different Wavelengths: SMBs, Change, and SaaS Adoption, is available for purchase and download from Saugatuck's website at www.saugatech.com/510order.htm.

Published on September 30, 2008, with the research conducted throughout the summer months, the 24-page study includes Saugatuck's analysis of world-wide survey data from 200 IT and business executives within companies having from 10 to 999 employees. To add context and insights, Saugatuck interviewed 20 IT and business executives from these firms, and included insights from briefings with more than 30 SaaS providers regarding SMB markets, offerings, and positioning. Research highlights include the following:








• There are clear delineations within the overall SMB class when it comes to SaaS adoption, usage, and value. Saugatuck sees three basic groups of SMBs based on SaaS behavior and preferences:
• Next-generation technologies are of relatively low interest to SMBs as a whole.
• For all sizes of firms, SaaS is more likely to enable new and better capabilities and functions than to replace existing applications and IT functions.
• While SMBs are among the most aggressive adopters and users of SaaS, SMBs of all sizes are actually doing less with SaaS than larger firms are.
• The manner in which SaaS solutions are acquired has changed significantly from 2007 to 2008. We see an increasing trend away from collaborative business+IT review of SaaS acquisition cases, and an increasing focus on IT-specific and business-specific review and approval.

"That was my introduction to public service," he says. "In Arlington, what we realized after those attacks, was that if we had our one main data center shut down, we wouldn't be able to support government."

Vivek Kundra, chief technology officer of the D.C. government.

So when he took over as the district's CTO in 2007, he decided that "moving to the cloud" would have its merits, because a company such as Google has so many data centers that it would ensure better business continuity and security.

"Their data centers are geographically dispersed," he says. "That was attractive to me from a security perspective."

If you haven't read CIO.com's account of Microsoft's frantic attempts to keep Procter and Gamble from using Google Apps, read it now. As I reported last year, I've personally seen very large companies kicking off large pilots of Google Apps to wean themselves off Microsoft, but I've yet to see such a dramatic response from Microsoft.

Microsoft is blase about Google Apps in public, just as it used to be about open source, but incidents like P&G are making the software giant realize that it has a serious problem on its hands.

Macquarie Hosting says it has invested more than a million dollars over the past year in virtualization hardware and core Internet and security services to support this initiative.

The company has already begun testing the service with many of its current customers including News Limited, Westpac and Showbiz.com.au.  

Awareness and familiarity with Software-as-a-service (SaaS) across the Asia-Pacific region has reached an all time high, according to Springboard Research.

Their finding is based on a survey of 530 CIOs and IT managers in India, ASEAN, China, and Australia and New Zealand.

Springboard's report, entitled 'Software-as-a-Service in APAC: The Momentum Continues' into the SaaS Market in APAC (excluding Japan) found that revenue from SaaS will register a compounded annual growth rate of 59 per cent during 2007-2011, reaching an estimated US$1.8 billion by 2011.