by Brad Kenney
September 2007 (Excerpt)
A decade ago, SaaS didn't even exist. When investing in IT, manufacturers were either shrink-wrapped into expensive out-of-the-box solutions or tethered to custom installs with consultants camped out on site just to keep IT humming along hitch-free.
However, about eight years ago, a revolution in software began when Salesforce.com, a provider of customer relationship management (CRM) solutions, kicked off the Software as a Service (SaaS) sector.
As Doug Timmel, director of manufacturing solutions for on-demand software provider Bluewolf Inc., relates, "Increasingly companies have come to realize that it's much easier and more cost-effective to use Web-based SaaS."
The SaaS "software delivery service" has so many potential business advantages that on-demand applications are appearing across the manufacturing business model, coming from companies as small as startups all the way up to the sluggers of the software field.
