SDA India is an online resource for Software, Development,IT, Architecture, Open Source, Mobile, Security, Databases, Delphi, C, OS, Asp, .Net, Php, Xml, Java

The market for SaaS in APEJ is registering significant growth in awareness and adoption, with the market increasing 92.5% in 2006 to reach a market size of USD 154 million, according to Springboard Research. Springboard forecasts that the SaaS market in Asia will reach US.16 billion by 2010, with a compound annual growth rate of 66%, to comprise 15% of the enterprise software application market.

A substantial increase has been recorded in SaaS awareness in the last year, with awareness among those surveyed (385 organizations) increasing from 41% in 2006, to 75% in 2007. This increase in awareness also led to a rise in adoption, with 46% of those enterprises surveyed replying that they were using some form of SaaS in their organizations (compared to 29% in 2006). Springboard also observed that the primary reason for adoption shifted from price to other factors that included ease of use, ease of implementation, and lower maintenance.

“We saw significant increases across the board for SaaS through our research, which proves that SaaS has market momentum for the long run,” said Dane Anderson, CEO & Executive Vice President for Research at Springboard Research. “It is a very dynamic time for SaaS in Asia with pure-play vendors like Salesforce.com, Netsuite, and WebEx gaining increased traction in Asia, together with smaller SaaS firms making moves into the region. Round that out with the large players in the industry like SAP, Oracle, and Microsoft becoming more aggressive with SaaS, and the market for the rest of 2007 and 2008 is going to be very interesting,” Anderson added.

Springboard found that although customer relationship management (CRM) remains the largest SaaS application segment by revenue in Asia, representing 45% of total SaaS revenue in 2006, data shows that organizations are aware of and use many different types of SaaS applications. Springboard also found satisfaction levels with SaaS applications ran very high, with all application segments scoring between a 7 to 8 on a 10-point scale.

“SaaS is definitely going beyond CRM, which is the area it has been associated with in the past,” said Ravi Shekhar Pandey, Research Manager for Springboard Research. “With all segments of SaaS growing, we are seeing applications across the board being adopted by enterprises in the region and more importantly, we are seeing enterprises being very happy with the SaaS applications they are using. This bodes well for the market, not only the small to medium businesses that have been the mainstay for SaaS vendors, but also those large enterprises looking at SaaS for non-critical applications;” added Pandey.