03 Dec 2008

SaaS 'increasingly popular'

More businesses are planning to adapt software-as-a-service (SaaS) technology within their IT infrastructures after the technology has evolved over the last decade, a survey has found.

Research by industry analysts Gartner has revealed that 90 per cent of enterprises are planning to maintain or increase their investment in SaaS.

Some 258 IT executives in countries across the globe were included in the group's study.

Respondents said cost-effectiveness, ease and speed of deployment were among the attractions of SaaS services, which form part of the trend towards green IT solutions such as virtualisation and cloud computing.

Sharon Mertz, research director at Gartner, said: "Use of SaaS has been evolving during the past decade and the model has become increasingly popular over the past three or four years."

Start-ups have been able to introduce web-based services that have competed with Microsoft offerings after introducing SaaS-based business offerings quicker than the software giant, wrote industry Andrew Conry-Murray in a blog at Information Week last month.