Microsoft: 86% Of Small To Medium Businesses To Utilise SaaS By 2009

23/04/09

By Mark Seemann, Product Strategy & Development Director

Computer software giant Microsoft has indicated that 2009 will see Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) adoption amongst small to medium-sized businesses (SMBs) increase dramatically following the release of a recent Microsoft study.

The survey, entitled the 2009 Microsoft SMB Insight Report(1), revealed that 86% of Small-to-Medium Businesses across the UK, US, France, Canada and Brazil intend to make use of SaaS during 2009.


Microsoft Highlights Hosted Solutions Uptake

On the whole, Microsoft has recognised that companies are now ready to start deploying hosted services for collaboration and e-mail purposes. This is backed up by a survey...

...released in March, in which Microsoft highlighted that '56% of SMBs surveyed said they were thinking about spending the same amount or even more on IT in the next 12 months'(1).

Eduardo Rosini, Corporate Vice President for Microsoft's Worldwide Small and Midmarket Solutions and Partners Group, claimed that the current economic downturn was perhaps the main driving force behind the increase in SaaS deployment. He stated that; 'SaaS allows firms to do more with their technology without having to introduce new infrastructure.'

Mr Rosini claimed that 2009 would be the "tipping point" for SaaS and that the recession could actually be contributing to the projected uplift in SaaS adoption. Using the traditional software model companies would be required to invest heavily in hardware, software licenses and ongoing overheads such as IT staff salaries.


Gartner Reports

These findings are similar to those of another study from IT analysts Gartner, who reported that 90% of companies they interviewed were planning to grow their use of SaaS within the next year(2).

In addition, Gartner found that businesses utilising the SaaS model were making savings of between 25 and 40 per cent on their projects. These savings were made in the lower implementation and... continued on page two >

 

 

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