The Cutter Consortium (which in itself is a somewhat unfortunate name – Nightmare on Elm Street anyone?) has just released a report on Business Technology Trends. Well kind of…. They’ve release tantalising snippets and those without a (paid) subscription to their service get the following friendly note;
Yes – without a subscription the mere mortals among us (which pretty much means everyone outside of enterprise) can’t get a look in.
So let’s look at some of the teasers that Cutter have released from the report.
It seems that 63% of responding organizations are using SaaS which is a massive increase front he 32% using SaaS the year before. Editor of the report Jeff Kaplan comments that;
Last year, the survey gave us a hint that this jump in adoption might occur. Even before escalating fuel costs and the recent collapse of the credit markets, 80% of our SaaS survey respondents last year who reported they were considering SaaS solutions stated they expected to adopt a SaaS solution by the end of 2008. This year, 85% of those who are considering SaaS expect to adopt a SaaS solution by the end of 2009. That could take the proportion of survey respondents using SaaS solutions to 75% next year!
Of curse without the metrics of what type of SaaS solution, how widespread its deployment is throughout the organisation and whether it is an ongoing deal the result is pretty meaningless. I mean an organisation with 100000 employees that has five graphic designers using a digital assets SaaS solution is great – but it’s not earth shattering by any stretch of the imagination.
Another vaguely interesting metric is that 97% of respondents reported satisfaction with their SaaS deployments. If nothing else this gives us a little faith in enterprise due diligence – I mea in my experience enterprise takes months to make a decision about purchasing a new packet of paper clips – SaaS buying decision, challenging IT as they do, take more time and analysis – you’d hope like hell they’d be satisfied once they’d actually deployed the product!
Disappointingly (especially considering my post regarding the low importance of cost-benefits for SaaS) the biggest benefit reported with SaaS deployments is lower costs – which begs some questions as to whether these businesses are truly leveraging the benefits that SaaS can actually deliver.
The graph below details the respondents reported perception of the greatest benefits of SaaS.
So interesting… but not enough info. So here’s a challenge for Anne and Jeff at Cutter. We’ve got a large and targeted readership here at CloudAve who would be very interested in what your full report has to say. We challenge you to show that you’re a sharing organisation that understands the value that shared and open knowledge can bring. Prove you’re not a business mire in 1.0 thinking and open the report up to our readership.
And yes I understand that research firms make their living from selling reports – but there’s value to be found in other ways – and maybe, just maybe, we can change the model – one report at a time.
The challenge is on…
Ben, there’s more — including the demographics — at http://www.cutter.com/press/081113.html and http://www.cutter.com/press/081120.html. The analysis is ongoing; results will continue to be released/announced at the Cutter site and on the Cutter blog, http://blog.cutter.com. But since you called us out, if people want to register with us, they can download the Executive Updates, free, at http://www.cutter.com/offers/saassurge.html. (And by the way, Cutter Consortium is named for an actual historical figure in Arlington, Massachusetts, where we’re based — there are no sharp implements involved!)
Anne – I’m impressed, to be honest I didn’t expect a reply let alone the offer you’ve made. You might have just, single-handedly, changed my opinion of analysts
Thanks for the kind offer – you just gained yourselves a whole lot of cred!