CRM Cloud Computing

It probably doesn’t surprise you that CRM, in broad terms, is the biggest market for software as a service. After all, Salesforce.com (News - Alert), one of the redwoods in the SaaS forest, is an explicitly CRM service, and has spawned a host of imitators and competitors.

It might surprise you just what a sizable chunk of the market CRM has, though. According to a recent blog post on CloudComputing, “Gartner expects SaaS (News - Alert) to represent nearly 32 percent of the CRM market's total software revenue in 2011.”

That means CRM is the 800-pound gorilla in the SaaS room.

Overall projections are sunny for SaaS. Gartner (News - Alert) expects revenue to grow 21 percent in 2011, reaching $12.1 billion, and the growth will contine through 2015, when worldwide revenue is projected to reach $21.3 billion. All that’s up from $3.2 billion in 2010.

"The market landscape for on-demand CRM continues to evolve and mature as the availability and use of SaaS solutions become more pervasive," the blogger quotes Tom Eid, research vice president at Gartner, as saying. "Greater market competition and increased focus on mega-vendors reinforce the legitimacy of on-demand, mitigating initial objections about security and availability for many."

In May TMC (News - Alert) had a special commentary from Rahul Asthana addressing the issue of whether you should look at SaaS CRM or not.

“You are responsible for IT strategy at your organization. You need to implement a CRM tool to streamline and automate your customer-facing business processes,” Asthana said, adding that “you are at the crossroads – you can either implement a standalone CRM from a popular SaaS vendor or you can deploy a CRM that comes integrated with your (SaaS or on-premise) ERP system. How do you make such a strategic decision?”