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SaaS: Surge of Interest in SaaS — but is the Enterprise ready?
In April at Software 2006, McKinsey/IDC reported statistics from their SaaS survey. Now McKinsey has updated the numbers in a new report due to be released soon. Their new report shows that 61% of North American companies with over $1 billion in sales plan to adopt one or more SaaS applications in 2007. This is compared to only 38% of companies having any plans for SaaS in 2005.
But it’s hard to know whether or not software SaaS vendors can match the hype and expectations of analysts like McKinsey. What is true is that SaaS software offerings are growing quickly. ThinkStrategies has put together a catalog of SaaS companies and categorized them by application category. The list includes 1200 companies in 79 categories.
Somewhat of a surprise, PLM-vendor PTC shows up on the list, and other notable entries in this category include CrownPeak and SpringCM. But looking through the list of Content Management companies doesn’t turn up many well-known or long-established companies. The trend towards SaaS has clearly started, but whether it will move as quickly as predicted is not as clear.
All of the SaaS offerings on the ThinkStrategies list appear to be targeting content management from a very generic perspective, but one size seldom fits all, especially in the enterprise. For large enterprises, more than likely, customization will be required.
That leads to something that is being called SaCS — Software as a Customized Service. Hosted solutions, but packaged and customized for companies. This approach captures much of the flavor of SaaS, treating IT as a utility, but it also reflects accurately the business processes within the organization.
SaCS is more descriptive of the model that Formtek has pursued in creating our on-demand solutions. Formtek works closely with our customers and provides hosted solutions tailored to their processes.
