SaaS: the Death Knell for Corporate IT?

The Nick Carr cited a new, not-yet-released survey by McKinsey & Company which found that 61% of North American companies with sales over $1 billion plan to adopt one or more SaaS applications over the next year, a dramatic increase from the 38% who were planning to install SaaS applications in 2005. Carr's McKinsey handlers cite such factors as lower up-front costs, lower total ownership costs, faster implementation than traditional licensed software and more vendor accountability as the major driving forces. SaaS has proven to be an enormous success in the Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software marketplace with Comparing The ROI Of SaaS Versus On-Premise report Forrester says that (based on 10-year ROI) in general, on-premise models increase in financial attractiveness as the number of users increases. That suggests that SaaS is currently more attractive for small and mid-sized companies with relatively few users and less attractive for large enterprises with many centralized users. However, Forrester adds that enterprises operating in multiple geographies with 25% or more users in remote locations benefit more from SaaS options. Fellow Enterprise Irregular Jerry Bowles has more than 30 years of varied experience as a writer, editor, marketing consultant, corporate communications director and blogger. For the past 20 years, he has produced and written special supplements on new technologies for a number of magazines, including Forbes, Fortune and Newsweek.

http://www.enterpriseweb2.com