Two Thumbs Up: CMP Media Tackles the State of the SaaS Union

In a recent article, CMP Media does a great job giving the state of the SaaS union. While the article is not specific to the Spend Management world, many of the findings and arguments can be generalized to our specific corner of the On-Demand universe. From the start, I like the attitude and style of the author, as well as punchy background on what SaaS actually is: "To the uninitiated, SaaS is the jargon-loving IT industry’s term for an arrangement wherein the functionality of a software product is delivered to the user of that product over a network, typically the Internet, through a service interface." According to the piece, in today's market "the discussion around SaaS has revolved around what Microsoft might gain or what Oracle might lose vis-à-vis the new pure-play SaaS providers such as Salesforce.com. But that debate, notwithstanding how big it seems today, may actually turn out to be a much smaller, if not completely irrelevant point, in a much larger discussion -- on what value SaaS can offer to the buyers of business and technology services." For those that thought the old media was lost somewhere between the blogosphere and the analyst world, this piece provides a great example of how trade rags -- whether virtual or print -- can adopt to the new media world, providing great analysis and insight.

- Jason Busch