SaaS will become the most disruptive technology in 2020

More and more organizations are opting for SaaS solutions. Today, 64 percent of small and medium-sized businesses rely on cloud-based technologies to drive growth and increase workflow efficiency. In addition, 78% of companies say they plan to expand the number of SaaS platforms they use over the next three years, which will increase the average number of applications used from three to seven.

Investment in SaaS will grow exponentially

According to the study “The State of SaaS 2016”, carried out by Better Buys, the investment in SaaS is increasing, and will continue to do so over the next decade from 8 million dollars in 2015 to 55 million dollars estimated for the year 2026.

According to technology research firm Gartner, technological changes, especially mobile devices and greater reliance on digital technology, are the key to this growth:

• At the software level, the subscription model already reaches 50% compared to traditional local licenses.

• By 2020, 25% of companies in the emerging regions will run their core CRM systems through SaaS, which means an increase of 10 points over 2012.

• 85% of small businesses are willing to increase their investments in SaaS solutions over the next 5 years.

Vertical SaaS or horizontal SaaS?

The new SaaS offerings and the increase in start-ups are reducing the market share from the large companies that during the last decade had focused on the development of horizontal SaaS (products focused on software categories: marketing, sales, human resources…). However, the trend is towards the adoption of vertical SaaS, that is, organizations are looking for software that responds more to the specific needs of the industry.

Thus, by 2014, vertical-specific software represented the largest segment of the software market, with 114 million dollars in revenue. And it continues to increase.

Mobile SaaS will continue to grow

Although SaaS growth is widespread globally, the United States still holds more than half of the market share, with a clear dominance of the development of cloud-based applications for mobile devices.

In the United States, nowadays, 43% of small business owners use mobile devices as the primary device for their operations. This demand for mobile SaaS will continue to increase as the market grows. By 2019, a Cisco report says that 90% of mobile data traffic will be generated by cloud / SaaS solutions, which will mean an increase of 81% approximately two years.

Considering all this data, SaaS will become the most disruptive technology in 2020. According to KPMG, cloud computing, which encompasses SaaS (Software as a Service), IaaS (Infrastructure as a Service) and PaaS (Platform as a Service), “will drive the transformation of business into business over the next few years” along with data, analytics and cybersecurity, with a significant impact on job creation and demand over the next decade.