Take up of ‘software as a service’ (SaaS) is set to grow by 20% in the next year to a market worth just under $11 billion – effectively doubling from around $5.5 billion in 2005.
That’s the forecast from analyst IDC, which suggests that SaaS has now become one of the fastest growing segments within IT. And it’s not alone: rival Gartner estimates that 25% of all systems delivered in the next few years will be on the SaaS model.
SaaS is here to stay: comply or pay the price,” says Graeme Port, CTO of business software management firm ManageSoft, who points out that, with the mechanism of software delivery changing to web browser, there is an additional level of complexity around licensing.
Port suggests that enterprise SAM (software asset management) solutions must be able to manage SaaS applications, as well as traditional installed applications.
“SAM and license compliance systems must be able to track usage of applications in a web-based business environment on an ongoing basis to ensure that enterprises can check on the usage of SaaS applications, and enable the optimisation of licenses,” he warns.
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