The term "sassy" was etched into my brain as a loose synonym for "sexy" or "hot" by the late Phil Hartman from Saturday Night Live episodes. Although I'm not sure where the acronym for software as a service (SaaS) originated, the time has come to burn this one into your brain. SaaS is becoming sassy ... at least according to IDC.

Now to put some perspective on the enterprise software market, the entire market in
2004 was $150+ billionish (I triangulated data from IDC, Gartner, and Merrill Lynch). According to IDC, the SaaS market is going to grow at a 26 percent annual rate to $8.1 billion through 2007. Although there are those that provide a discount rate for analyst projections, this equates to a significant substitution for some sectors towards hosted software and away from unhosted software. To get more background on the SaaS subject, Steve Ulfelder has an article today portraying "Apps on Tap". There he writes:

By any name, SaaS is hot. According to research firm IDC, worldwide sales of hosted software will grow at a 26 percent annual rate to $8.1 billion, through 2007, up from $2.1 billion in 2002. During the same period, IDC forecasts low-single-digit growth for unhosted software. These predicted growth rates have grabbed software vendors' attention, with the result they're tripping over themselves to offer their wares in hosted form.

The SaaS value proposition, while very much a work in progress, is compelling-and worthy of investigation for most companies. Leading off the list of benefits is the lower up-front cost. The large fixed cost of the traditional enterprise software implementation, heavily laden with infrastructure and consulting fees, is replaced by a more budget-friendly variable cost.

As for more photo selection for this post, it has nothing to do with my taste. I just happened to search the photo archives for the word "sassy", and this is what I turned up.

Steve Shu