Gartner: SaaS Revenue Growth To Top 17 Percent In 2012

Worldwide SaaS revenue will jump 17.9 percent in 2012 to $14.4 billion, up from $12.3 billion in 2011, according to the analyst firm. The ramp up will continue through 2015, when SaaS-based revenue will reach $22.1 billion, Gartner said.

Gartner defined SaaS as primarily a delivery and management approach for software such as CRM or ERP. Among the top CRM and ERP vendors are Oracle, SAP, Salesforce.com, and Microsoft.

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Sharon Mertz, research director at Gartner, said SaaS adoption is growing as businesses become more familiar with the model.

"After more than a decade of use, adoption of SaaS continues to grow and evolve regionally within the enterprise application markets," Mertz said in a statement. "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." She could not be reached for further comment.

In North America, SaaS software revenue is forecast to reach $9.1 billion in 2012, up from $7.8 billion in 2011. The highest SaaS deployments in North America were expense management, financials, e-mail and office suites, Gartner said.

SaaS revenue in Western Europe is projected to total more than $3.2 billion in 2012, up from $2.7 billion in 2011, in contrast with Eastern Europe, where SaaS revenue is expected to reach $169.4 million, up from $135.5 million last year.

For the Asia/Pacific region, SaaS revenue is forecast to total $934.1 million in 2012, up from $730.9 million in 2011. Revenue from sales in Japan will reach $495.2 million in 2012, up from $427 million in 2011.

SaaS revenue in Latin America is forecast to total $419.7 million in 2012, up from $331.1 million last year.