Gartner expects W. European SaaS revenues to reach over $3.2 billion in 2012 (up from $2.7bn in 2011) as EMEA adoption currently runs "at two speeds."
W. Europe (as the most developed EMEA market) is adopting SaaS at the most rapid pace as European SaaS vendor numbers grow and N. American vendors continue pushing into the region. Meanwhile E. Europe and MEA represent medium to long term opportunities, as vendors need to overcome ongoing infrastrucuture challenges. The analyst also saysnetwork instability is a general EMEA issue.
Gartner predicts 2012 E. European SaaS revenues will reach $169.4m, up from $135.5m in 2011. Global SaaS revenues are to reach $14.5 billion in 2012 (growing by 17.9% Y-o-Y), before reaching WW revenues of $21.1bn in 2015.
"Increasing familiarity with the SaaS model, continued oversight on IT budgets, the growth of platform as a service (PaaS) developer communities and interest in cloud computing are now driving adoption forward," Gartner says.
Horizontal applications (such as distributed virtual workforces and Web 2.0 activities) remain the most common use of SaaS, even if interest in vertical-specific software is also growing.
