According to Synergy Research Group, Microsoft is now the world’s largest supplier of software as a service (SaaS) to enterprises, accounting for 15 percent of this part of the cloud computing market. Salesforce previously held the title and still comes in second with 14 percent market share. Oracle was the fastest growing SaaS company in the second quarter.
“In SaaS, a big battle is playing out between the traditional broad-based software vendors and companies that are focused on a specific application area or industry sector, many of which are entirely cloud-based,” said Synergy Chief Analyst and Research Director John Dinsdale. “It might be tempting to assume that the latter camp are leading the charge, but in fact the traditional software vendors are growing their SaaS revenues more rapidly, helped by their huge base of on-premise software customers that can be aggressively targeted for conversion to a SaaS consumption model.”
Overall, the enterprise SaaS market grew 33 percent, bringing in $11 million in revenue during the second quarter. Synergy says that the market will triple over the next five years.
