Some time last year Gartner made a prediction "Software as a service (SaaS) represented approximately 5 percent of business software revenue in 2005 and by 2011, 25 percent of new business software will be delivered as SaaS - Gartner", In a recent teleconfere focussed on "Predictions for 2007 Customer Relationship Management", one of the predictions made is "By 2009, more than 50% of new sales force automation (SFA) deployments will be based on software as a service (SaaS) delivery models".

Listed below are the set of recommendations they provide along with this prediction:

- Involve the IT organization in the SaaS application selection process to acquire strong guidance on service-level agreements for the vendor contract.

- Realize that SaaS requires a fundamentally different budgeting process than perpetual licenses, and will often fit into an operating budget (as opposed to a capital budget).

- Manage expectations (especially if sales processes are complex),and do not assume a one-month deployment time frame because other sales organizations with simple needs achieved rapid implementations.

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Prashanth Rai