The SaaS Market Hits Mainstream: Adoption Highlights 2011

Forrester recently surveyed more than 1,000 firms across North America and Europe to better understand software-as-a-service (SaaS) adoption and the business drivers for SaaS usage. We found that adoption continues to grow across both horizontal categories (such as customer relationship management [CRM], human resources [HR], and email) and industry-specific categories (such as SaaS for claims processing or SaaS for hospital management). In many cases, business groups or external groups like customers and partners drive SaaS purchases. This research has significant implications for sourcing and can be used to help sourcing executives understand: 1) where and how to take advantage of SaaS; 2) what groups in their organization and ecosystem they should plan to work with for SaaS purchases; and 3) key business goals and the benefits of using SaaS solutions.