Posted 11/10/09 at 07:06:45 AM by Paul Lilly

According to market research firm Gartner, worldwide software as a service (SaaS) revenue is on pace to reach $7.5 billion in 2009. That's a big turnaround from 2008 -- 17.7 percent, to be exact -- when revenue fell flat at $6.4 billion.

"The adoption of SaaS continues to grow and evolve within the enterprise application markets," said Sharon Mertz, research director at Gartner. "The composition of the worldwide SaaS landscape is evolving as vendors continue to extend regionally, increase penetration within existing accounts and ‘greenfield’ opportunities, and offer more-vertical-specific solutions as part of their service portfolio or through partners."

But that's not the only good news. Gartner says the market will show consistent growth at least through 2013, by which time SaaS revenue is expected to exceed $14 billion in the enterprise sector.

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Posted 06/16/09 at 11:13:28 AM by Mark Edward Soper

This week, Adobe converted its Acrobat.com online service, introduced last year,  from beta to production status, and rolled out two extra-cost upgrades while continuing to offer a free version. All versions of Acrobat.com include Adobe's Buzzword online word processing, but other features differ:

• The free version can create up to five PDF files, allows up to 100 downloads per file, supports web conferences for up to three users, and provides tech support through moderated forums.
• For $14.99/month or $149/year, you can upgrade to Premium Basic, which enables users to create up to 10 PDF files per month with unlimited downloads, web conferences for up to five users, and premium one-on-one phone chat tech support. Upgrade by July 16 to a one-year subscription, and save $15.
• Upgrade to Premium Plus, the high-end service, for $39/month or $390/year, and get unlimited PDF creation and downloads, web conferences for up to 20 users, and premium one-on-one phone chat tech support. Upgrade by July 16 to a one-year subscription, and save $50.

There are also a couple of new goodies at Acrobat.com Labs for all Acrobat.com users. To learn more, join us after the jump.

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Posted 01/15/09 at 07:57:04 AM by Pulkit Chandna

Google Apps reached a major milestone in September last year, when it raced past the 1 million enterprise users mark. But the huge lead that its arch rival MS Office enjoys meant that the achievement was just worthy of a perfunctory pat on the back. Now Google has taken a major step that might help popularize Google Apps among business users and help it trim Microsoft’s huge lead to a small extent.

Google has launched an authorized reseller program for Google Apps. Authorized resellers, under this program, will be able to bundle Google Apps along with their own offerings. The company hopes that the reseller program will help it add more medium and large businesses to its expanding user base. Resellers will exercise complete control over customer billing and account management.

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Posted 12/10/08 at 01:42:00 PM by Pulkit Chandna

Google seems to be espousing a very simple strategy of expanding rapidly and at all costs. Although there is always going to be the possibility of Google spreading itself too thin, there is also immense hope of it benefiting under the law of averages. Market research firm Net Applications has fueled rumors of a Google OS. Yes, Google might be getting ready to enter the OS market.

Net Applications’ legion of software sensors across the internet has gathered some interesting data recently. Around one third of the traffic coming from Google has its OS information inexplicably hidden. According to Net Applications, this is truly unprecedented as they have never observed “an OS stripped off the user agent string before”. Is Google working on an OS of its own now?

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