IT Week has an interesting commentary by Rod Newing on how SaaS may impact the mission critical accounting systems market. Like many other fields, SaaS is a common topic in accounting circles, but analysts quoted in the article predict that SaaS will not affect this particular market for a few years given that companies aren't typically inclined to seek migration of mission critical accounting software.
The article had some interesting statements about the barriers to SaaS migration, particularly that of the emotional barriers. Companies commonly fear having data hosted elsewhere and fear what could happen if the SaaS provider had a network outage and an application became unavailable. IT Week calls these fears irrational, remembering that that most reputable SaaS providers will have a team of in-house specialists focused on problems of data security and meeting of service level agreements guaranteeing specific amounts of uptime, so in many cases, SaaS could be even more reliable than in-house options.
ComputerWorld addressed some of the same points in a piece listing nine things you "need to know" about SaaS. Nearly all vendors guarantee 99.5% uptime or greater for applications and have methods in place to address specific customers' security concerns, such as keeping data inside a firewall for customers that require in.
Joe Tate, IT analyst over at the Accountancy Age Blog just posted something about the future of accounting software -- SAAS, perhaps? http://technologymatters.accountancyage.com/2007/10/accounting-so-1.html