All signs lead to an impending slow down in economic spending.  Whether this will adversely impact IT budgets is not the issue, but how much will the carnage be is the concern being debated.  Regardless, overall funding for new investments appears to be bleak which is why innovative business leaders seeking to fund innovation without significant capital outlays will most likely gravitate to alternative deployment options such as Software as a Service (SaaS) or other OnDemand models because of:

• Subscription billing - why worry about the cumbersome capital expenditure budgeting process when you can sneak this in with operational expenses?
• Rapid deployment - avoid the headaches of complicated deployments, the expense of system integration, and the cost of maintaining a data center.
• Affordable constant innovation - avoid the cost and disruption of upgrades while receiving more frequent delivery of new features and innovation.
• Purpose built functionality - most SaaS offerings are designed for a specific industry, role, or market segment.  The result - strong capability in micro-verticals and other purpose built scenarios.

The hallmarks of SaaS are hard to ignore, especially during the advent of an economic slow down.  Based on some of the growth rates in the previous quarter, vendors like Amitive, Concur, Intuit, NetSuite, Plexus, SalesForce.com, SuccessFactors, Taleo, and Zoho may have the leg up.
Your POV
Look forward to hearing your comments about how on-premise vendors will fare compared to the SaaS vendors.   If you've got an idea or suggestion to share, please comment or send a private email to [email protected].  Look forward to hearing your thoughts!
Copyright © 2008 R Wang. All rights reserved.