Software as a Service (SaaS) is rapidly becoming a common delivery model for most business applications, including accounting, collaboration, customer relationship management (CRM) etc. Now email via SaaS is also gaining momentum.
According to Matt Cain, Vice President, Gartner "…one of the largest sectors of the software-as-a-service (SaaS) model is email services, an especially attractive option for small businesses".
Gartner provides a very interesting point - it is evident that there have been plenty of changes in e-mail in the past two years than it has ever been in the past 19 years. Small companies that do not have the infrastructure of an I.T company especially are in need of e-mail solutions.
SaaS also provides substantial security advantages. Security is really essential in the new Web 2.0 world where greater volumes of business transactions are done via the web making security a very important factor. In addition, the small and medium business will be looking for bundled packages that provide access to tools along with the core email solution. This model is fast catching up as small businesses have understood the nature of SaaS very much and they are more and more getting adapted to pay-per-use.
The industry analysts and Gartner research states that the SaaS model for email solutions will represent about 20 per cent of the email market by the end of 2012.
