Articles about SaaS

Three quarters (75 percent) of large businesses now consider SaaS tools an essential part of their business. This is according to a new report by GoCardless, based on a poll of more than 1,000 senior decision makers.

Small businesses aren’t that convinced though, with every second company sharing the same thoughts on SaaS.

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The global public cloud services market is expected to grow 18 percent this year, according to Gartner’s latest report. Totaling $246.8 billion (up from $209.2bn last year), the growth will mostly come from IaaS, which is expected to grow 36.8 percent and reach $34.6 billion.

The growth will also be fueled by SaaS (20.1 percent increase, to $46.3 billion).

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When the Great Recession hit in 2007, Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) began to catch the attention of enterprise CIOs as a favorable way to reduce the CAPEX necessary to provide their businesses with world-class IT services, and deliver more predictable OPEX. Fiscal reasoning may have been the carrot-on-the-stick, but CIOs were just as smitten by the promise of a simplified IT environment. It took several years for SaaS to firmly establish itself in the enterprise -- gaining a true foothold in 2012 -- and the delivery model is now considered mission critical by most enterprises. The "hands off" environment, rapid deployment potential and lower upfront costs all contributed to SaaS’s disruptive shift.

Notably, however, when SaaS was first being considered as an enterprise option, many cautioned that its use should be rooted in "vanilla" business applications that would not require complicated integration with enterprise data. Remember, SaaS burst onto the scene as a way to provide the SMB market with quick and affordable access to robust, single-purpose capabilities such as CRM or human resource management, but the applications were not particularly good at exchanging data in real-time, across transactional environments. "The convenience of using SaaS applications can mask a significant IT challenge of integration, both with other enterprise applications and with data sources," warned CIO Magazine.

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The switch to as-a-service models for delivering software gives organizations a wide range of providers to choose from, but it can lead to a proliferation of different solutions and a challenge for management.

Cloud management specialist BetterCloud is launching a new unified software-as-a-service (SaaS) management platform to give IT departments powerful automation and governance capabilities.

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The cloud-based office productivity software market is expected to reach $17 billion in 2016. That’s more than a 400 percent increase from 2009 when the market was valued at $3.3 billion.

With the success of cloud-based applications and their pay-as-you-go model, it shouldn’t be surprising that the cloud version of one of the most widely used desktop application packages would grow to become a popular choice for businesses. I’m of course referring to Office 365, Microsoft’s leading productivity and work software package delivered via the cloud.

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Software-as-a-service (SaaS) is a new distribution model that is rapidly gaining popularity with businesses all over the world. A branch of cloud computing, SaaS lets businesses and consumers lease a particular piece of software from a third-party supplier, who delivers it over a network connection -- most commonly the Internet.

As with other examples of cloud computing, this provides a number of benefits in terms of flexibility, scalability and affordability, which is why it is hardly surprising that many businesses have been willing to embrace SaaS. In fact, global SaaS revenues are expected to grow 21 percent year over year to $106 billion in 2016.

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There is a perception in the IT business that adopting software-as-a-service models will make life easier for tech teams and end users alike.

But a new study by cloud specialist BetterCloud suggests that in fact SaaS is making IT jobs harder. According to the survey of over 900 IT professionals, 56 percent of Google Apps and 62 percent of Office 365 IT pros believe their jobs are becoming more difficult due to rising SaaS adoption.

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Microsoft is now the overall leader in the software-as-a-service (SaaS) market, beating Salesforce by a tiny margin. However, not everything is as straightforward as it seems.

According to Synergy Research Group, Microsoft, even though late to the party as usual, now holds 15 percent of the SaaS market, while Salesforce, the leader so far, has 14 percent share.

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SaaS application adoption is growing fast and with it comes increasing expectations to be able to access any application from anywhere on any device.

Consequently organizations want login solutions that can help them reduce risks in their environment, deliver a better experience for their end-users, and adapt to the complexities of existing infrastructure and new applications.

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A new study by software selection site Better Buys shows that the shift to SaaS solutions is growing apace, expected to increase from just $8 billion in 2015 to $55 billion by 2026.

It also reveals that more than 1,400 new SaaS companies have sprung up in the last five years, taking a large volume of market share from major competitors like Adobe, Cisco, IBM, and Salesforce, and accounting for 57 percent of the SaaS market.

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Business IT is undergoing a major shift as many organizations get closer to adopting a fully cloud-based approach. But this means that IT departments inevitably give up some degree of control over data governance, security and overall data management.

Security automation specialist BetterCloud is launching a new automation engine called Workflows that orchestrates critical, complex processes to ensure accuracy, precision, and compliance across SaaS applications.

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Back in September of last year we reported that Microsoft had announced its purchase of cloud security firm Adallom to help its customers protect their cloud-based data and applications.

In February it teased that a new Cloud App Security offering based on Adallom's technology would be released in April. Well, today the wait is over and the product becomes generally available as a cloud-delivered service to help IT and security teams gain visibility and control over cloud apps.

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Accidental deletion of information is the leading cause of data loss from SaaS applications, responsible for 43 percent in the US and 41 percent in the UK, ahead of data loss caused by malicious insiders and hackers.

This is among the findings of a new survey of IT professionals in the US and UK from cloud backup specialist Spanning which also has insights into who is responsible for SaaS data protection, organizational confidence in SaaS data protection, and the top concerns surrounding moving data to the cloud.

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Companies are increasingly turning to software as a service solutions. But these often lead to problems when needing to integrate workflows with in-house or other SaaS solutions.

To address this, cloud software specialist Azuqua has announced the availability of a new integration solution for connecting cloud applications and automating business-critical workflow.

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Software as a Service (SaaS) is one of the biggest technology growth areas at the moment. That's reflected in the amounts of capital being pumped into the sector by investors.

A new SaaS Trends Report by Tibco Analytics and venture capital tracker CB Insights shows that funding for SaaS companies was $11.7 billion in 2014, up 70 percent over the past year. SaaS funding has tripled since 2011.

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