Gartner: SaaS now mission critical
A new report by research company Gartner has described software as a service (SaaS) deployments as being critical for organisations.
SaaS is one of the most commonly used types of cloud computing by businesses and Gartner's report stated that companies are using the technology for development and testing production, as well as mission-critical workloads.
Joanne Correia, research vice-president at Gartner, said: "We've seen a real transition from use cases in previous surveys where early SaaS adoption focused on smaller pilot projects. Today, the projects are mission-critical and production grade."
Gartner surveyed companies from 10 countries around the world, including the UK, the US, Germany, China and France. It found that almost half (44 per cent) of businesses gave overall cost reduction as the main reason for their investment in SaaS services.
The Gartner report also looked into infrastructure as a service (IaaS), business process as a service (BPaaS) and platform as a service (PaaS), all of which are rapidly expanding parts of the cloud computing world.
Fabrizio Biscotti, research director at Gartner, explained that cloud-hosted applications are becoming more popular among businesses, with companies viewing them as "alternatives to internally managed systems; they will generate increasing demand for SaaS extension and integration".
He added: "Although SaaS and IaaS are fairly consolidated, PaaS is still open for expansion, with both SaaS and IaaS providers looking at PaaS as a natural extension for growth.
"Of all the cloud technological aspects for which respondents indicated investments, BPaaS, IaaS and SaaS are the most mature and established from a cloud landscape perspective, while PaaS is the least evolved."
Gartner's research found that the traditional deployment model for on-premises software will significantly shrink in the coming years, dropping from 34 per cent today to just 18 per cent by 2017 as cloud-hosted options become a lot more popular.
Businesses looking to move services into the cloud should evaluate the performance of their existing network and consider setting up a leased line or MPLS network.
