The cloud: bringing permanent changes to business.

• Author: Robinson, Lisa
• Position: TECH STRATEGY

Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) has simplified finance and accounting processes and administrative functions for many financial executives. In the current increasingly complex regulatory environment, moving software and data into the cloud from older and slower legacy systems can save time and money, reduce information technology headaches and help companies become more compliant.

Many SaaS vendors offer a suite of solutions and products. Once users take the leap from legacy to virtual, they most often wish they had clone so sooner.

Considering Moving to SaaS?

SaaS is a software delivery model in which software and data are hosted centrally in the cloud--in other words, virtually--and are accessed by clients using a Web browser. This flexible platform has become a model for business applications, including document management, enterprise resource planning, human resources, customer relationship management, sales, security, information technology service management and social networking.

SaaS is also improving companies' business operations worldwide. Technology research company Gartner Inc. forecasted that SaaS revenues would reach upward of $12 billion in 2011, a 20.7 percent increase from 2010 revenues of about $10 billion.

SaaS is spreading through most industries, including government, health care, education, information technology and accounting.

The model is improving companies' business operations worldwide. "The cloud is not just a passing phenomenon but a reality that has just begun to realize its potential," notes audit and accounting firm KPMC in its 2011 publication The Cloud, Changing the Business Ecosystem.

Furthermore, audit and accounting firm PwC's Security Among the Clouds, published in 2009, cites a statistic from Gartner that "by 2012, 80 percent of Fortune 1000 enterprises will pay for cloud computing service and 30 percent will pay for a cloud-computing infrastructure."

With SaaS becoming more widely available and accepted, more companies are licensing subscriptions to the cloud and SaaS applications that previously only resided on installed hardware. In fact, Gartner predicts SaaS use will grow at roughly double the pace of on-premises human resources software in the near future, predicting an annual growth rate of 22 percent through 2011 for enterprise application software markets.

Kristy Robinson, human resources manager at PCMall Inc., is one of those executives, who made the move to the cloud. She uses the...