Integration Tools Necessary for SaaS, Cloud Providers
January 3, 2012
Now that 2012 is upon us, we can reflect on the past year, the cloud computing trends that took place, and determine what will be required this year as the market continues to accelerate.
According to Gartner estimates, worldwide software-as-a-service growth was on track to reach $12.1 billion in 2011, representing a 20.7 percent increase from $10 billion in 2010. This growth has been far and wide across enterprise level and at SME level, a recent industry blogger points out, noting that businesses have either begun consuming cloud services, with SaaS the most popular – or they have shifted their overall business plans to migrate to the cloud…
However, integration remains a hurdle for most SaaS or cloud providers, according to a recent industry study.
Consulting firm ThinkStrategies, and MuleSoft, a cloud integration provider, recently announced the top five findings from a recent study focused on the impact of integration on SaaS and cloud vendors in the cloud computing market.
According to the survey’s findings, “integration is the most common hurdle in the sales process for SaaS/cloud providers.”
The study found that almost 90 percent of respondents considered integration to be “important” or “extremely important” in winning new customers, MSPNews™ reported. Among the survey’s other significant findings are:
- Integration is a key to winning new customers. Over eighty-eight percent of SaaS/Cloud vendor respondents view integration as either important or extremely important in winning new customers.
- Integration need is widespread. A majority of SaaS/cloud vendors (52.8 percent) say that more than half of their customers require integration.
- Integration is the top barrier to new SaaS/cloud sales. Almost 88 percent (87.7 percent) of SaaS/cloud companies identified integration as a common or very common sales hurdle.