Cloud adoption rates have skyrocketed in recent years, with software-as-a-service recognized as the staple delivery model. With SaaS a common part of the IT ecosystem these days, it may be tempting to think it has always been around in business. However, a recent Gartner survey shows that widespread adoption is a much more recent trend.
The analyst firm's numbers show that 71 percent of enterprises have only used SaaS for three years or less. The pace of progression itself may not be shocking, but it can perhaps explain why many cloud storage companies have cited an explosion in data volume as a common challenge for maintaining cost. The good news is that the past several years have also brought maturity to the technology, reducing some of the initial fears that hindered adoption.
"Seeing such high intent to increase spending isn't a huge surprise as the adoption of the on-demand deployment model has grown for more than a decade, but its popularity has increased significantly within the past five years," said Charles Eschinger, research vice president at Gartner. "Initial concerns about security, response time and service availability have diminished for many organizations as SaaS business and computing models have matured and adoption has become more widespread."
SaaS value propositions
With adoption rates as high as they are, many providers are scrambling to add differentiating factors. Two of the most important values to bring to the table, according to MuleSoft CTO Ross Mason are connectivity and interoperability. With thousands of applications entering the cloud space, there are many more disparate programs that must communicate with each other than ever before.
"The advent of APIs for SaaS has revolutionized the way organizations can connect applications together and create new business models," Mason wrote for GigaOM. "With SaaS, you can pick and choose individual SaaS applications to run your business, connecting them together through their APIs."
