AdvAnced PrActices council Driving Competitive Strategy Through Thought Leadership

The Society for Information Management's (SIM) Advanced Practices Council (APC) is an exclusive forum for senior IT executives who value directing and applying pragmatic research; exploring emerging IT issues in-depth; and hearing different, global perspectives from colleagues in other industries. Executive Summary With rising economic pressures and frustration with existing information systems, Software as a Service (SaaS) is gaining acceptance. It's no longer only a point solution for a small business, but is now being embraced in the largest organizations. CIOs considering SaaS adoption must weigh the short term benefits it can provide, such as quicker and less expensive implementations, with concerns related to having data and applications under a third-party vendor's control (security, privacy, vendor sustainability, etc.) Research shows that SaaS is being adopted by functional areas, regardless of the IT department's standards. Therefore, even if CIOs would prefer to keep all applications in house, it is likely they will be faced with the challenge of integrating SaaS applications in the near term. There are several integration options and, based on the historical trends, we recommend consideration be given to both SaaS-delivered process-based integration tools and Platform as a Service providers.