Report: Microsoft Remains SaaS Powerhouse
    A new analyst report on the Software as a Service (SaaS)  market contends Microsoft's strength in collaboration services is making it  tough for other vendors to catch up.
The report this week on the enterprise SaaS market from  Synergy Research Group valued the whole sector at $20 billion in the second  quarter of 2018, growing at 32 percent per year. 
While the Infrastructure as a Service  (IaaS) and Platform as a Service (PaaS) sectors of public cloud computing are  growing faster, Synergy contends that SaaS is the biggest piece of the cloud  market. Within SaaS, which is a highly fragmented market, Microsoft is  dominant.
"Microsoft has a worldwide market share of over 17% and  is now the leading SaaS vendor by some distance, having overtaken Salesforce  nine quarters ago. Thanks primarily to its leadership in the high-growth  collaboration segment, Microsoft's annual revenue growth is running at 45%, far  surpassing overall market growth," the research group said in a statement.
   [Click on image for larger view.]
 
   [Click on image for larger view.]
Rounding out the top five by market share are Salesforce,  Adobe, Oracle and SAP, with Cisco, Google, IBM, ServiceNow and Workday in the  group behind them.
The report is good news for Microsoft partners. While there  are literally of thousands of SaaS apps to choose from, partners who have  expertise in the Microsoft stack have a foot in the enterprise door with Office  365 and other Microsoft SaaS applications. Those who can put together solid  bundles of SaaS offerings on top of, or adjacent to, the Microsoft stack are in  a strong position to expand at those customers.
Meanwhile, the Synergy report indicates there is plenty of  room for continuing growth. At this point, SaaS accounts for less than 15 percent of total  enterprise software spending.
 
	Posted by Scott Bekker on August 23, 2018