Businesses’ appetite for on-demand software applications shows no signs of dissipating in the near future, and service-oriented computing will continue to become an even larger percentage of the overall worldwide software market, according to the latest report from IT researcher Gartner.

Buoyed by lower startup and maintenance costs compared to on-premises application deployments, as well as the ability to distribute and share applications and documents through the cloud, software as a service (SaaS) is is poised for rapid growth for at least the next four years.

“After a decade of use, adoption of SaaS continues to grow and evolve within the enterprise application markets,” Gartner analyst Sharon Mertz said in the report. “As tighter capital budgets demand leaner alternatives, familiarity with the model increases, and interest in platform as a service and cloud computing grows.”

This year, Gartner predicts worldwide SaaS sales will eclipse $8.5 billion, up 14.1 percent from 2009 sales of $7.5 billion. More telling, this rapid increase in both customers and SaaS vendors means that on-demand applications will make up a larger percentage of total enterprise software sales this year and for the foreseeable future.

SaaS apps, which accounted for a little more than 10 percent of the total enterprise software market last year, are expected to represent at least 16 percent of worldwide software sales by 2014.

For the report, Gartner defined SaaS as software that is owned, delivered and managed remotely by one or more providers.

“Adoption varies between and within markets, and although use is expanding to a wider range of applications and solutions, the most widespread use is still characterized by horizontal applications with common processes, among distributed virtual workforce teams and within Web 2.0 initiatives,” Mertz added.

Gartner estimates that 75 percent of the current SaaS delivery revenue could be considered a cloud service, and that could exceed 90 percent by 2014 as the SaaS model matures and converges with cloud services models.

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The chart provides the 3-month moving total beginning in 2004 of permanent IT jobs citing Cloud Computing within the UK as a proportion of the total demand within the Miscellaneous category.

Worldwide chart from Indeed.

Here are 5 websites which may help you find that Cloud Computing Job.

Cloudcomputingjobs.org

Cloudjobs.net

Indeed.com

Simply Hired

ITjobswatch.co.uk

A Better Metric for Analyzing the Value of the Cloud

In my opinion, no two metrics were more injurious to the IT field than TCO and ROI. I have yet to meet one senior executive with budgetary responsibility that has accurately tied investment in IT back to a sizable gain or to represent a true TCO. Let’s face it; these are notional concepts at best that were devised to be manipulated to provide IT executives with justifications for funding projects of questionable value to the business.

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ExpressYard Car Repair Billing System the Most Widely used in North America
ATLANTA–(Business Wire)–
RMI, a leading independent provider of comprehensive software solutions to the
transportation industry, today announced it has acquired ExpressYard, a Flint,
Michigan-based provider of SaaS software applications that support the billing
of railcar repairs for contract shops and railroads in North America. Financial
terms of the transaction were not disclosed. ExpressYard will relocate its
Michigan operations to RMI`s headquarters in Atlanta, Georgia.

Since 2002, ExpressYard has provided SaaS software solutions that enable
contract repair shops and railroads to manage the billing for railcar repair
work. The ExpressYard CRB solution allows repair facilities to manage all
aspects of railcar repair and billing activities, ensuring that all repairs are
billed in compliance with industry standards and regulations. More than 200
repair facilities throughout North America use ExpressYard CRB for accurate and
timely data capture and billing.

Founded in 1979, RMI provides critical transportation and logistics solutions
for a variety of participants in the transportation industry, including
short-line, regional, Class I, and terminal switching railroads, railcar leasing
companies, rail shippers, and railcar repair shops. RMI`s mission-critical,
integrated solutions assist its customers with many aspects of managing their
operations, including rail transportation, intermodal operations, equipment
maintenance and repair, shipment tracking, and freight revenue management
services.

Source ]]> http://www.saasbuzz.com/2009/11/rmi-acquires-saas-provider-expressyard-a-rail-car-billing-service/feed/ 1 http://www.saasbuzz.com/2009/11/why-googles-l-a-win-is-significant-for-saas-saasbuzz-com/ http://www.saasbuzz.com/2009/11/why-googles-l-a-win-is-significant-for-saas-saasbuzz-com/#comments Mon, 02 Nov 2009 16:09:18 +0000 admin http://www.saasbuzz.com/?p=73

Why Google’s L.A. Win is Significant for SaaS

The Los Angeles City Council voted 12 to 0 last week to outsource its e-mail system to Google. The largest city in the country will make the cloud a home for its enterprise e-mail with a $7.2-million contract that will move all 30,000 city employees to Google. This might be the most significant win to-date for SaaS, a win that could drive others to cloud computing.

L.A. mediated security risks by placing a clause in the contract that requires Google to compensate the city in the event that the Google system is breached and city data exposed or stolen. That is something that every major SaaS contract should include, if you ask me. Also, this is not the free Gmail everyone knows. This is an enterprise version of their cloud-delivered software that comes without the ads, and with technical support.

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Industry leaders cite subtle differences between the technologies at SIAA OnDemand 2009 conference

Is cloud computing just a renaming of SaaS (software as a service) in today’s buzzword-prone IT landscape? After all, both involve accessing applications over the Internet, with those applications generally residing on third-party servers.

But industry executives cited subtle differences Thursday at the SIAA (Software & Information Industry Association) OnDemand 2009 conference in San Jose, Calif., during a panel session pertaining to cloud computing, business models, and the enterprise.

Source

Since we launched an all-new, more business-focused Box this year, we have concentrated our efforts on making it easy for you to share content with anyone, from anywhere. Of course, a fair amount of that is on the product side, but another key component in realizing this vision are meaningful integrations with other business platforms. Businesses are turning to cloud-based services more than ever and we want to make it easy for them to centralize their files one place, while also providing the flexibility to work with them from the other applications that are core to their infrastructure, whether it be HR, finance, ERP or other department-specific software.

Our first step in this direction is an integration with Salesforce.com, the leading CRM on the web and one of the pioneers in the Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) space.

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