Once thought to be the realm of SMBs, SaaS is increasingly becoming more prevalent in the enterprise. CIO Australia has a good article about this today that profiles the rise of SaaS in larger companies.
The article quotes Capgemini's head of SaaS pointing out that SaaS means faster time to market and a more business centric cost model that allows for closer aligning of IT costs to business impact.
A representative from a SaaS CRM firm suggests also that some companies deploy a SaaS solution as an interim solution for a problem and then ultimately end up keeping the SaaS solution after being pleased with the value.
Other points include that what is outsourced in SaaS is merely "grunt work that should have been done by the vendor" and that the CIOs are more and more frequently becoming involved in decisions to deploy SaaS.
The article makes other interesting points as well. I have often wondered why SaaS is so frequently labeled as an SMB issue, and I do suspect that more and more we will hear of larger companies choosing SaaS and that enterprise class SaaS solutions will become more prevalent.
Good article. There's no reason why SaaS should be thought of as only for SMBs.
In fact, one of the companies I represent is providing large government agencies with outsourced email services on a SaaS basis. Clients include DHS, State Department, HHS, and hundreds of other government entities across the country. www.govdelivery.com
They really had to overcome a bias against SaaS in the government market, and the founder and CEO has an interesting take on SaaS vs. ASP. If I can set up a conversation for you, please let me know.