SaaS web hosting 'on the rise'

Almost three-quarters of UK internet professionals say they use Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) platforms for web hosting purposes, according to a new survey.

Conducted by Econsultancy and Convera, the research also found that SaaS is used by 77 per cent of web marketing executives for email and by 62 per cent for sales and marketing purposes.

Other uses for SaaS included content management (59 per cent), file and asset storage (57 per cent), site search (57 per cent) and ad serving (51 per cent).

"The concept of SaaS continues to be immensely popular for a range of business functions because of the convenience, the lower cost of ownership and generally reduced costs," said Linus Gregoriadis, research director for Econsultancy.

Recent research by IDC suggested that the SaaS market will expand by 42 per cent over the course of 2009 compared with last year, up from its previous estimate of 36 per cent growth.