A Sampling of SaaS (Industry Week)

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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.

View a list of SaaS applications (including eSPC)