How SaaS Will Change Technology Sourcing Strategy

Sourcing executives are increasingly considering SaaS solutions as part of their overall technology vendor landscape. Are these technologies disruptive to sourcing? To answer that question, Forrester recently analyzed more than 120 software product markets to determine SaaS' current and potential impact. While we found that SaaS will minimally affect many markets, it will create many changes in sourcing decisions for some key markets. For example, emerging software products like blogs and wiki platforms began as SaaS products, forcing changes to how sourcing and vendor management operate. Additionally, SaaS as a disruptive technology occurs in software products that represent about 25% of total global software market, especially in customer relationship management, human resource management, IT management, and security software. Moreover, SaaS is becoming a sustaining technology for many incumbent vendors, as SaaS products complement licensed software products — either by serving niches where licensed products have not been adopted or by addressing unmet needs. Overall, SaaS will more than double from 7% of software spend in 2010 to 16% in 2013.