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Published 26 February 2020
Gartner, Inc predicts the global public cloud services market will grow by 17% in 2020 to £206.2 ($266.4) billion. Of this, the software as a service, or “SaaS”, market will continue to be the largest contributor, which is predicted to grow to £98.9 ($116) billion this year.
In the simplest sense, software as a service is a specific strand of cloud computing, whereby computing resources, for example software, development platforms, servers, storage and software, are accessible over the internet as a utility service.
In this article, Chris Little, a solicitor in our Corporate, Commercial and Regulatory team, considers the move away from the more traditional on-premise software model by looking at the benefits and drawbacks of cloud based computing, in particular SaaS. He also considers a number of the upcoming trends of this major cloud-based service.
Having said that, SaaS does also have certain drawbacks:
Below are three future trends which we believe will have the most significant impact on the delivery of SaaS solutions:
Thanks to the rapid rise of mobile connectivity, there is a global trend towards internet usage through use of mobile devices, which SaaS providers are alive to. We predict that software providers will continue to develop their solutions for usage on tablets and smart phones, in order to keep pace with this growing demand.
The SaaS market is becoming increasingly saturated as the cloud computing solutions industry continues to grow. One way in which service providers are able to differentiate their offering is through “micro SaaS” solutions, which refers to the provision of additional features which are not available on an existing platform, thereby improving the user’s overall usage of the overarching SaaS product.
AI and other forms of machine learning are likely to continue to impact SaaS by automating certain features previously undertaken by members of staff, a common example being the use of ‘chatbots’ to answer customer’s queries in relation to their use of the solution. We also see an increased focus on personalising a customer’s experience through use of natural language processing and machine learning. In this regard providers are able to track and analyse a user’s online activity (interests and preferences), thereby allowing them to tailor the user’s experience accordingly.
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