The answer is a definite "yes" according to the data presented in this article: The Rise of Software-as-a-Service (CIO Today, December 27, 2005). Salesforce.com is offered as a prime example of companies offering SaaS to corporate customers.

One reason why they're thriving now, unlike the recent failure of the application service provider (ASP) model, is the availability of rich web-based user interfaces powered by technologies such as AJAX. Concerns still exist, in particular top  protection of corporate data/information, putting strategic information outside the firewall and integration with on-premises solutions - but as the cost differential benefit grows, users are finding it easier to accept these risks.

12:16:33 PM    
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Who is using Groove Virtual Office today? With over 4 million users, the list is long. Examples of government and civic organizations include Illinois homicide detectives, Interpol, US Army in Afghanistan and Iraq, Katrina rescue workers in Florida. A few commercial companies from the list include Siemens, HP, DHL, Pfizer and Wipro.

These examples come from Smarter ways of working by Leslie D`Monte (Business Standard's ICE World, December 28, 2005), which describes the product as "...threaded discussions, calendars, project management, white board, chat, VoIP and instant messaging – all in one product. It can be deployed in any IT environment, behind firewalls with no change in security settings, no open ports, and will work with double NAT (Network Address Translation) and even GPRS (General Packet Radio Service) connections with roaming IP addresses,"

But the article goes further - describing how organizations are moving beyond communication point solutions to adopt and gain value from "collaboration suites – email, chat, VoIP, instant messaging (IM), document and knowledge management, blogging, wikis and much more put together." The market is estimated by Gartner to grow from $680 million to $1.1 billion by 2008. Still in the early adopter stage, Gartner predicts adoption to rise as the technologies mature and become more integrated with business processes.

Examples show how these products are maturing: Microsoft will be integrating key features of Groove into its Office Suite; IBM's Workplace suite has shown double-digit growth for three consecutive quarters; BEA's WebLogic Portal and Oracle Collaboration Suite 10g add collaboration to their core products as well. The Open Source community is actively at work as well. Novell donated core components to start up the Hula project, which intends to bring together blogs and wikis within an XML namespace to facilitate team collaboration. (Hula is one of thousands of ongoing projects. Check out Open-Xchange and Zimbra for more powerful examples of open source collaboration suites.)

Adoption issues can't be ignored. On the technical side there's interoperability and security to worry about. But collaboration is all about people communicating, so trust and cultural issues must be acknowledged. Integrating collaboration suites into business processes takes time even without these issues, so the payoff might take years to see. As Alok Shende, the Director of ICT Practice at Frost and Sullivan puts it: "Collaboration is not a quick fix. As part of a re-engineering effort, it may take two to fours years to see the result."

Estimates of ROI are still lacking other than savings from eliminating business trips - which are often substantial enough to justify the investment on their own. For instance, Microsoft anticipates saving $ 70 million in 2005 by using MOLM (Microsoft Office Live Meeting) to replace one-in-five business trips.

10:44:24 AM    
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