 "SMBs To Walk The SaaS Way")
According to a report from Saugatuck Research, SMBs are embracing Software as a Service (SaaS) as a business-critical strategic investment at a much faster rate than executives of larger enterprises. SMB executives who contributed towards the research believe SaaS is “ready for prime time”.
Saugatuck believes that SaaS enables outsourcing expensive skills necessary for development, deployment, and maintenance of key applications, which benefits the SMBs. SaaS also provides key infrastructure and capabilities such as maintenance and upgrades without significant CapEx investment.
According to the research firm, SMB executives are less risk-averse and more aggressive adopters of IT than their counterparts at larger firms, due to the SMBs’ tendencies toward reducing operational costs.
Saugatuck believes that as vendors realise the readiness of the SMB market for SaaS and the low barriers to entry for building a SaaS solution, the market will see an explosion of vertical based core application stacks and highly specialized vertical market niche applications.
However, this could severely fragment SaaS markets. Hence, existing net-native (standalone) horizontal SaaS offerings will need to fend off competition from traditional software vendors trying to move down-market via SaaS product line extensions.