Gartner and IDC predict bright future for SaaS

A CIO.com article reports that both IDC and Gartner are predicting good things for the Software as a Service industry, and a huge boost in business over the next several years. This could explain why Microsoft wants a piece of this action and announced its own cloud computing initiative, known as Microsoft Azure, this week. When you look at the numbers, it's easy to see why Microsoft covets a share of these earnings.

Gartner predicts that SaaS spending will top out at 6.4 billion this year alone, then more than double to $14.8 billion by 2012. What's interesting is that Gartner sees much of this spending targeted at content, communications and collaboration. As companies grow more comfortable with a services model, they see it as way to save money and speed up enterprise software implementation cycles.

IDC paints an even rosier picture by saying the $16.2 billion spent on cloud computing this year will climb to a whopping $42.3 billion by 2012. The difference in numbers could have to do with how each company defines the space. Whether these predictions are accurate, or just wild speculation, it seems cloud computing is in a position to grow--especially over the next year as companies look for ways to reduce overall IT spending initiatives.

For more information:
-read the CIO.com article

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