Breaking down the B2B Saas Trends

As a top ERP and CRM consulting firm for the mid market, we keep a close eye on B2B SaaS and other enterprise software trends. It’s fascinating the growth that B2B SaaS has seen in the past 2 years. As you would expect, we don’t anticipate the growth slowing down — in fact, we expect to see it accelerate over the next 3 years. Here’s additional info that adds to the chart above…

1. Companies are expected to have spent nearly $120 billion on cloud, SaaS, IaaS, and PaaS products/services by the end of 2015. That’s an incredible amount of buy-in and adoption for an industry that basically didn’t exist 5-6 years ago. It signals further that companies are interested in the remote usability and flexibility that cloud-based and service-based offers possess.
2. 44% of IT leaders suggested that cloud-based approaches to software could be key factors in reducing costs in the future. While it’s hard to predict where cost-savings will come from for every organization,  we would we expect to see this number rise. We would also expect to see this held as a majority opinion in the next 5-6 years as more businesses adopt the idea of a full cloud-based software strategy.
3. 40% of any modern IT budget is no laughing matter. That kind of investment in mobility is a strong indictment on how the workforce is moving. There is a greater emphasis on fast decision making and quick data processing. This means end users need access at a moments notice. This was talked about in-depth at Microsoft Convergence recently; the idea being a single user with access to a comprehensive dashboard across multiple devices.
4. The amount of money expected for increased data flows and mobile integrations is astronomical. It goes to show just how much growth this industry will likely experience over the next few years. One of the challenges that B2B organizations will face will be effective implementation. Software generally only works as well as it is configured and aligned to an organizations goals. It’s extremely likely that tomorrows problem will be the same as todays; which is successfully implementing the software.
5. Anyone with an iPhone is likely already discovering the growth of DaaS (data as a service). The Apple product is prodding heavy users to upgrade their data backup at a cost once they’ve reached their standard limit. Data storing and data sharing is new wave of aaS products that is expected to grow along with SaaS. Modern organizations may quiver at these monthly or quarterly service costs at first, but in the long run it’s likely to prove more affordable and a better overall business approach.
6. The spending increases of over 30% over the next 3 years can be directly attributed to the classic bell curve. As any businesses are currently entrenched in moving to SaaS systems now, many inside the curve and on the backend will soon begin their own migrations.
7. If projections are correct SaaS growth will be up 200% from 2010 by the end of the year. For businesses that expect to refrain from SaaS forever, this should be the clearest signal that things could be changing forever.

While B2B SaaS solutions have strongly established themselves as the software of the future, one of the greatest unknowns is what the next generation of products and service will look like. Additionally, many businesses are still very reluctant to cloud-based technology. How far can these two world grow apart and still co-exist? This is one of the harder questions to answer; however it is a questions we often have with our clients.

We strongly believe in the right tool for the right job. Every enterprise software project is different. Is a cloud-based software solution in your future?