Authors: Bruce Guptill, Bill McNee Last year, Saugatuck research indicated that small and mid-size enterprises (SMEs) tended to be among the most aggressive adopters of SaaS overall. And earlier this year, research with Finance executives indicated stron ...

Authors: Bruce Guptill Examination of Saugatuck SMB-specific SaaS survey data indicates strong short-to-mid term adoption plans by firms in Asia-Pacific and Europe. US SMBs show broad existing SaaS use and expansion – but indicate much lower levels in th ...

Author: Charlie Burns Much of 2008 taught average citizens fundamental supply-and-demand economics in energy pricing. Abnormally high prices for gasoline and heating oil had repercussions in the prices of almost all goods and services and motivated chang ...

Authors: Benno Scholze, Charlie Burns Spurred by spiraling increases in energy costs and growing public sentiment about conservation of natural resources, green initiatives have gained popularity in everything from bags at supermarkets to IT. In light of ...

Authors: G. Kitaeff, Charlie Burns As various models and methodologies of Cloud Computing services evolve, surely there will be some impact on traditional hosting providers of all sizes.  While there will be some impact due to this disruptive technology, ...

Author: Bruce Guptill We have seen a recent upsurge of news and blog posts regarding various government agencies worldwide investigating, moving toward, or (increasingly) requiring open-source-based software for their systems. Three key reasons dominate ...

Author: Charlie Burns Far too many user executives simply assume that moving any workload to a Cloud Computing offering will automatically yield savings compared to keeping it in-house or on a traditional hosted infrastructure. The reality is that “it ai ...

Author: Charlie Burns User IT organizations are striving to reduce infrastructure costs while improving the IT’s responsiveness to their business users. Implementing one or more forms of infrastructure virtualization is one of today’s most popular approa ...

Authors: Mike West, Mark Koenig, Bruce Guptill, Bill McNee This Research Alert summarizes key findings from two recently published Strategic Perspectives, focusing on five of the most important and disruptive technologies to watch in 2009, as well as fiv ...

Authors: Mark Koenig, Mike West, Bruce Guptill, Bill McNee Saugatuck’s research focuses on the emerging IT trends that disrupt enterprise IT markets and business models – most importantly, how information technologies and their use will change user busin ...

Authors: Mark Koenig, Mike West, Bruce Guptill, Bill McNee Saugatuck’s ongoing research agenda focuses on the emerging IT trends that disrupt enterprise markets and business models – most importantly, how information technologies and their use will chang ...

Author: Charlie Burns Previous Saugatuck research has articulated how user IT organizations are simultaneously being driven to reduce costs and to support increasingly dynamic and agile business processes. We have explained how, due to these forces, IT o ...

Authors: Sam Medina, Bruce Guptill This is the fourth Saugatuck CIO Perspective in a series on managing enterprise IT assets when both IT and business are disrupted by emerging technologies that do not – yet – fit into the enterprise IT portfolio. Part ...

Authors: Sam Medina, Bruce Guptill Previously-published Saugatuck research in October, 2008 presented a series of introductory models for managing enterprise IT assets when  both IT and business are disrupted by emerging technologies that do not – yet – ...

Author: Bruce Guptill Saugatuck’s annual user executive survey of on-demand software and services provides data, analysis, and insight in a range of areas from SaaS to cloud computing to IT management. Our most recent data indicate a strong current deplo ...

Author: Sam Medina, Bruce Guptill Previously-published Saugatuck research presented a series of introductory models for managing enterprise IT assets when both IT and business are disrupted by emerging technologies that do not – yet – fit into the enterp ...

Author: Charlie Burns The current economic climate is likely to increase simultaneous demands on user IT organizations to be more responsive in supporting business processes and to reduce costs. In response to these demands, user IT organizations are: ...

Authors: Charlie Burns, Mark Koenig On October 20, 2008, Bluewolf, a Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) consulting company, announced an expanded Integration-as-a-Service (IaaS) offering. Bluewolf claims its new offering, dubbed “Integrator,” is the only solut ...

Author: Bruce Guptill While overall user executive expectations of SaaS business value show similar rankings worldwide, we see some important differences when we look at the data by region – North America, Europe, and Asia. Simplification rules worldwide ...

Authors: Sam Medina, Bruce Guptill Cloud computing, software-as-a-service (SaaS), IT virtualization, open source software, and enterprise social computing exemplify disruptive technologies – “disruptive IT” – that affect the fundamentals of user enterpri ...

Author: Charlie Burns User IT organizations are striving to deliver improved corporate operations and increase the relevance and currency of their services to their business users. Two increasingly popular approaches are implementing inter-company (B2B) ...

Authors: Mark Koenig, Cynthia Beckham An explosion of next-generation mobile computing devices, combined with the rise of Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) and Cloud Computing means that mobility will be an integral characteristic of enterprise computing in t ...

Authors: Ron Exler, Bruce Guptill Recent end user interviews by Saugatuck show that open source is a growing part of the IT ecosystem within enterprises of all sizes and in all industries. While not always happily embraced, and sometimes completely shunn ...

Authors: Ron Exler, Bruce Guptill Executives within small and mid-size businesses (SMB) have a laser focus on what is best for their businesses. Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) as a general concept has reached a high awareness amongst SMB executives. Howeve ...

Author: Cynthia Beckham When reviewing and negotiating SaaS service-level agreements (SLAs) with SaaS vendors, enterprise executives need to determine which issues are critical to their business requirements and expectations.  SaaS vendors need to unders ...

Authors: Charlie Burns, Mike West User IT organizations are being challenged to support increasingly dynamic business processes. The business users they support are demanding new functionality delivered very rapidly without significant budget increases. ...

Authors:  Mark Koenig, Mike West, Charlie Burns, Bill McNee, Bruce Guptill, Allison Perrin This 27-page Drilldown Data Report supplements Research Report SSR-460, published on July 10, 2008. It details the disruptive evolution, status, and future of Sa ...

Authors: Sam Medina, Bruce Guptill Software as a Service (SaaS) provides user firms with expanded opportunities and capabilities, often at lower costs than could be attained via on-site software offerings.  But the rapid growth in range and depth of SaaS ...

Authors: Bruce Guptill, Mark Koenig A common belief among users and providers is that SaaS tends to enter enterprises through the “side door,” meaning that a user or a group of users, perhaps as a department or process team, will acquire and begin using ...

Authors: Bruce Guptill, Mike West, Bill McNee Already entering its third wave, Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) is now spreading throughout the enterprise, delivering mission-critical solutions well beyond the basic software functionality of first-wave SaaS ...

Authors: Bruce Guptill, Charlie Burns On June 26, 2008, Microsoft released Hyper-V for general (i.e., non-Beta test) availability. The timing of the release is approximately a month earlier than had been projected when Microsoft released the Beta version ...

Author: Cynthia Beckham SLAs are important tools for SaaS vendors as well as their enterprise users.  As SaaS solutions expand from department-wide to broader enterprise-wide usage – and as SaaS solutions are increasingly used for mission-critical busine ...

Author: Bruce Guptill Saugatuck’s latest user research regarding plans for enterprise SaaS applications deployment yields some intriguing insights into the realities of “enterprise-ready SaaS.” While there are clear top- and bottom-ranked categories when ...

Authors: Bruce Guptill, Allison Perrin Open source is at a key inflection point between user expectations and vendor capabilities. User IT and business executives are looking to trusted vendors for guidance while open source is appearing, often unbidden ...

Authors: Bill McNee, Bruce Guptill, Charlie Burns, Mike West The concept of Cloud Computing is both widespread and vaguely defined. It’s becoming more generally accepted that the evolution of SaaS will lead users into Cloud Computing in a variety of ways ...

Author: Bruce Guptill Data from Saugatuck’s latest SaaS user survey indicates a surprisingly powerful current presence, and solid growth, in almost all types of on-demand infrastructure services.  Saugatuck has mapped the services according to a “heat in ...

Author: Cynthia Beckham Saugatuck’s latest SaaS research, which includes interviews with more than two dozen SaaS user executives, indicates that even the most experienced SaaS user firms have not established formal SaaS governance or similar management ...

Authors: Charlie Burns, Mark Koenig Regardless of company size, most IT organizations are tasked with multiple common objectives.  Ongoing Saugatuck research has shown that chief among these objectives are: improve service levels, maintain security, redu ...

Author: Charlie Burns User IT organizations are being challenged to reduce the costs of their infrastructures and to demonstrate social responsibility by reducing electrical power consumption. As a result virtualization is becoming the most widely adopte ...

Author: Charlie Burns User IT organizations are being tasked to provide support for increasingly dynamic business processes. These new functions are expected to be delivered very rapidly and without significant budget increases. Ongoing Saugatuck researc ...

Author: Charlie Burns User IT organizations are being challenged on multiple fronts including implementing Service-Oriented-Architecture (SOA), and integrating and managing new Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) workloads. Simultaneously, user IT management is ...

Authors: Mike West, Bruce Guptill On-demand ERP vendor NetSuite has recently ratcheted up its platform play by announcing the NetSuite Business Operating System (NS-BOS) – comprised of NetSuite SMB suite offering leveraged by development tools, with the ...

Authors: Mark Koenig, Charlie Burns, Bruce Guptill Vendors of IT appliances claim their offerings can provide substantial relief to several of the challenges confronting typical user IT organizations. Their claims sound much like those of many SaaS provi ...

Author: Mark Koenig While Web 2.0 has garnered a lot of attention in the media, and investment by solution providers, in 2007, there is still work to be done before it can be considered enterprise-grade.  Chief among the inhibitors to adoption is th ...

Author: Charlie Burns User IT organizations are simultaneously being driven to reduce costs and to support increasingly dynamic and agile business processes. As a result, IT organizations are increasingly adopting one or more fundamental changes such as ...

Authors: Bill McNee, Mike West, Bruce Guptill, Mark Koenig Software-as-a-Service is poised for continued strong growth over the next few years, as it moves well beyond its initial focus on providing low-cost and “fringe” islands of automation in the clou ...

Authors: Charlie Burns, Mike West, Bill McNee In our continuing thread of research providing guidance to application ISVs transitioning to SaaS, Saugatuck has repeatedly been asked about the viability of leveraging virtualization technologies, so that th ...

Author: Mark Koenig Recent Saugatuck research has indicated that Business Intelligence is becoming an increasingly important area of investment for IT users (see Note 1).  This has even been reflected in our research into SaaS adoption, which confirmed t ...

Authors: Mark Koenig, Charlie Burns, Mike West Saugatuck Research into Business Intelligence and Corporate Performance Management suggests that the role of the CFO in the Enterprise is evolving yet again.  In the past two decades, we have observed the CF ...

Author: Charlie Burns IT management was viewed as an arcane art somewhere between esoteric science and mysticism. This resulted from the state-of-the-art of data processing technology which demanded a pathologic focus on the components and infrastructure ...