SaaS adoption swells in Europe | ZDNet
Summary
There are some interesting patterns to adoption of SaaS in Europe, which despite the efforts of the European Union to bring us all together, is still more of a collection of separate countries than a single market, especially when it comes to business applications. This is the second pre-conference seminar in the run-up to OnDemand Europe which takes place in June in Amsterdam (and which Im helping to organize as a paid engagement, see disclosure). David Bradshaw from IDC has titled his presentation for Amsterdam in a way that I think captures the spirit of the times: SaaS in Europe: Theres More of It Than You Thought. In a keynote, US research firm Saugatuck Technologys Bill McNee noted a finding that Europeans have a marked preference for buying SaaS solutions from an IT consultant rather than direct from the vendor — almost a mirror image of US behavior. Perhaps one reason why SaaS seems better accepted in France than in the UK is that the older acronym ASP (for application service provider) never gained the opprobrium that it attracted in the anglo-saxon world in the wake of the dot-com crash.
