Gartner, Inc predicts the global public cloud
services market will grow by 17% in 2020 to £206.2 ($266.4)
billion. Of this, the software as a service, or "SaaS",
market will continue to be the largest contributor, which is
predicted to grow to £98.9 ($116) billion this year.
In the simplest sense, software as a service is a specific
strand of cloud computing, whereby computing resources, for example
software, development platforms, servers, storage and software, are
accessible over the internet as a utility service.
In this article, Chris Little, a solicitor in our Corporate,
Commercial and Regulatory team, considers the move away from the
more traditional on-premise software model by looking at the
benefits and drawbacks of cloud based computing, in particular
SaaS. He also considers a number of the upcoming trends of this
major cloud-based service.
