SaaS (Software as a Service) is another way to sell and deliver online applications. Users have access to the software for a given amount of time – paying for it as they use it (think of it as a software rental). This model is becoming increasingly popular in the software industry due to its benefits for both users and providers.
Let’s take a look at the 5 trends we’re expecting to see by the end of 2016.
Market Growth
In 2015, the cloud software industry was evaluated to be around $70 billion dollars. By the end of 2016, it is expected to reach $106 billion dollars, representing a growth of 21%. This means there are plenty of opportunities for entrepreneurs and businesses in terms of SaaS products. Larger organizations are also aware of this and that’s why companies like Microsoft are heavily investing in cloud products- in 2018 it should represent around 30% of Microsoft’s revenue.
Digital Health & Healthcare IT
The most disruptive SaaS products in the next 2-3 years will be in digital health and healthcare IT. SaaS in the healthcare industry is fairly common- more than 83% of IT healthcare organizations have been using SaaS solutions for the management of their operations. However, it’s important to note that we do see an increase in LaaS and platforms as a service within this industry. Knowing that dedicated cloud computing solutions for healthcare can significantly reduce mistakes and save lives, the digitization of the healthcare industry is great news for all.
Emergence of Big Data
More Big Data Analytics software will emerge, and they will continue to be disruptive. Since the Internet of Things industry is growing, the expansion of cloud services for data analytics is expected to grow as well. As more devices, sensors, and businesses will focus on IoT products, the need to have software to crunch all this data will increase. The next Big Data Analytics software will focus mostly on real-time data analysis, giving an important advantage to companies that will use it to make fast, effective, and informed business decisions.
Data control will be harder
The BYOD (Bring Your Own Device) trend makes it harder for internal IT departments to keep up with security on mobile devices and tablets. For this reason, cloud-based security applications will become more popular. SaaS mobile security is an easy solution since instead of having to monitor the device itself, most commonly through containerization, the SaaS monitors the data traffic from the mobile device across the entire network.
More than 60% of companies will be using a form of IaaS by 2018
Gartner stated that Infrastructure as a Service will be the fastest growing part of public cloud in 2016. This is mainly due to the growth of large amounts of data and the cost to maintain the data centers. Having on-demand servers gives more financial flexibility to the organization, on top of allowing it to focus on its core activities.