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Software as a service (SaaS) is becoming more mainstream as a growing number of enterprises adopt these offerings. But until now the push to SaaS has largely been driven by business users, experts say, and now it’s time for IT to get more involved.

During the past few years, the people leading the charge to SaaS adoption have come mostly from business functions such as sales and marketing, without much involvement from central IT, according to a report issued in January by Gartner Inc.

But as IT executives realize that SaaS offerings are here to stay and that they need to take advantage of the potential of this software delivery model rather than see it as disruptive, they will need to ensure a balanced approach that takes into consideration issues such as security vulnerabilities , integration, service-level agreements and availability, Gartner says. They also must have an understanding of why business users want to leverage SaaS in the first place, according to Gartner.

“At many large companies, SaaS has not been on the CIO’s agenda; the CIO is sometimes the last one to find out about it,” says Robert DeSisto , vice president and distinguished analyst, Application Strategies and Governance , at Gartner. “W e’re finding now that the [SaaS] solutions are doing more and more complex things. And as SaaS continues to get adopted in large enterprises, CIOs are getting more involved,” DeSisto says.

One of the issues IT will need to deal with is application integration, DeSisto says. “O ne thing we’re seeing is the emergence of so-called application platforms as a service, which allow you to build applications in the cloud,” he says. “With that level of complexity, you can configure and customize and automate more processes.”

DeSisto says customer relationship management (CRM) remains one of the most popular SaaS offerings. Other applications include human capital management, procurement , and pricing management.

Gartner predicts that by 2010, 15 percent of large companies will have started projects to replace their enterprise resource planning (ERP) backbone (financials, human capital management and procurement) with new service-oriented architecture (SOA) and SaaS-based offerings. By 2012, business process management suites (BPMS) will be embedded in at least 40 percent of all new SaaS offerings, and more than 33 percent of independent software vendors will offer some of their applications optionally or exclusively as SaaS.

According to a report published by Forrester Research in March, in which the firm surveyed 1,017 technology decision makers, adoption of SaaS in large enterprises is now at 16 percent, up 33 percent from 12 percent in the previous year. SaaS usage varies by application, Forrester says, with human resources, collaboration and CRM showing the highest adoption rates, and ERP and supply chain showing lower adoption rates.

The study also shows that the software industry still faces barriers to adoption, including concerns about integration, customization, security and total cost of ownership. SaaS vendors, and IT executives at organizations that are considering adopting SaaS, will need to address these issues if they are to be successful with this emerging model of software delivery.

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