News

Half of Developers Report Hosted Software Projects

• By Kathleen Richards
• January 12, 2009

The research released today from Santa Cruz, Calif.-based Evans Data Corp. indicates that 51.9 percent of the developers surveyed expect to work on SaaS applications in the coming year, a marked increase from the 12 to 15 percent who reported SaaS projects a year ago.

SaaS -- software that uses a hosted delivery model and usage-based pricing -- is a subset of Internet-based cloud services, an emerging service model built on cloud computing. Of those surveyed, less than 10 percent reported using cloud services, citing security as the biggest concern. A quarter of all respondents -- and almost half of the Asia-Pacific developers-- indicated plans to use cloud computing "at some point," according to Evans Data.

Conducted biannually, the Evans Data Global Development Survey is based on data collected from extensive Web questionnaires filled out by 1,300 developers (in multiple languages) in North America, Asia-Pacific and Europe, Middle East, and Africa.

According to the latest survey results, SaaS activity is highest in North America, where 30 percent of developers reported currently working on hosted software applications. Developers in the Asia-Pacific region indicated the highest rate of adoption of SaaS dev projects during the next 12 months. Asia-Pacific coders also reported high rates of Internet application development, with 68 percent currently working some of the time on RIA projects. Developers in Europe, the Middle East and Africa reported the least SaaS activity, but 53 percent cited plans to work on hosted software apps in the next 12 months.

Survey data also indicated that 37 percent of North American respondents use virtualization for some aspect of their development. VMware was cited as the most popular vendor in Europe, the Middle East and Africa, followed by Microsoft.
 
The increase in global SaaS development, attributed to lower upfront investment costs and speed of deployment, did not correlate with a rise in service-oriented architecture.

"In terms of SOA, we see no change in these Global Survey Results versus those from six months ago," said John F. Andrews, CEO and president of Evans Data Corp. "In both surveys, 43 percent of the developers' companies have deployed SOA at some level."

.NET development also fell slightly in the last six months, according to survey results. "In terms of .NET, 47 percent said in the last survey that they would target the .NET architecture for their applications versus 41 percent for this current survey," Andrews said.

Evans Data is conducting a Global Development Survey on cloud computing and SaaS this quarter with research results expected later this year, according to Andrews.