The SaaS market continues to grow very strongly as highlight by the analysis firm Gartner, Inc. They're forecasting Worldwide SaaS revenue's of $7.5 billion in 2009 within the enterprise application markets. This is a 17.7 percent increase from 2008. By 2013 Gartner are predicting a massive worldwide SaaS revenue of over $14 billion. The breakdown on the figures is below (in Millions of $):

Source: Gartner (November 2009)

Interestingly the growth continues in all sectors despite the global recession. The downturn seems to be a catalyst for SaaS growth because of lower capital outlay. There is also increasing demand from users for self-service applications. In the SaaS website / web application monitoring marketplace Gomez, Inc, who have been enjoy considerable growth, were acquired by Compuware, an on-premis software provider, last month.

The recent growth SaaS and acquisitions continues to demonstrate the shift in demand from on-premis software/hardware solutions to on-demand services. This  'something-as-a-service' effect is being echoed across other tech markets including gaming. The Kristian Segerstrale, the CEO of Playfish who were acquired by EA this week, said: "The video-gaming market is in the middle of this fundamental tectonic-plate shift, away from being a physical product-driven industry to being a digital service-driven industry"