Bangalore: Adoption of software as a service (SaaS) has grown dramatically among users of enterprise software solutions, but it varies widely within markets, according to Gartner. A recent Gartner survey showed 71 percent of organizations have been using SaaS for less than three years.

In June and July of 2012, Gartner conducted a survey of 556 organizations across 10 countries and within four regions (North and South America, Europe and Asia/Pacific) to understand the trend in the movement to SaaS from traditional software license models and to gain insight into how and where software budgets were being spent.

The results indicate that interest in the SaaS deployment model remains strong and continues to expand with late adopters. Brazil had the largest number of new users, with 27 percent of respondents using SaaS for less than one year.

Implementing net new solutions or replacing existing solutions is now the primary driver for using SaaS, according to the survey. Worldwide, there is a shift in SaaS adoption from primarily extensions to existing applications to net new deployments or replacements of existing on-premises applications.

"Although approximately half of respondents in Asia/Pacific indicated the primary adoption driver of SaaS was net new deployments, the U.S. and European respondents indicated their strongest driver was to replace existing on-premises applications," said Charles Eschinger, research vice president at Gartner. "It's not surprising that SaaS is being deployed as net new deployments in Asia/Pacific since many of the users are relatively new businesses with few legacy systems. Markets, such as the U.S. and EMEA are mature with existing enterprise systems and are beginning to use SaaS as a replacement for legacy applications."

According to the survey, investments in SaaS are expected to increase across all regions. Seventy-seven percent of respondents expected to increase spending on SaaS, while 17 percent plan to keep spending the same. More than 80 percent of respondents in Brazil and Asia/Pacific indicated more spending on SaaS applications over the next two years. The U.S. and European countries were not far behind with 73 percent of U.S. respondents and 71 percent of European respondents intending to increase spending on SaaS.

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