27 Nov 2008

SaaS 'allows smaller firms to compete'

Small businesses can compete with market giants by using IT technology like software-as-a-service (SaaS) to its full potential, an expert has suggested.

Andrew Conry-Murray, writing at Information Week, commented that a 14-month start-up firm called Expresso has recently developed new solutions within Microsoft's Sharepoint portfolio.

The firm has used SaaS technology to allow users to share and edit Excel spreadsheets online and multiple users to collaborate on documents through an Expresso server.

Although the group's chief executive George Langan concedes that "Microsoft won the Office war a decade ago", the company plans to expand and introduce shared Word and PowerPoint files in the near future.

"Expresso's SaaS model requires no up-front hardware or software investment, and no long deployments," Mr Conry-Murray said.

"Because it's a service, it's been able to quickly integrate with third-party platforms," he added.

Microsoft purchases some 10,000 new data centre servers each month as part of its growth in infrastructure.