As we near the end of 2011, it is worth taking a look at the direction of Software as a Service and what we can predict from today’s economy. We have all seen immense SaaS growth. Public IT cloud services spending is expected to grow from $16.5 billion in 2009 to $55 billion in 2014. The IDC predicts SaaS will overtake traditionally packaged software by 2014 and, according to Gartner, SaaS alone is expected to top $20 billion by 2015. Managed Cloud Hosting providers have announced their SaaS cloud hosting growth higher than any other cloud-based service, and on and on.

With all these signs of unbelievable growth, it's important to ask ourselves; is this success attributed to SaaS being a recession-friendly service with lower upfront costs and no long-term commitments, or can we really look to see this new trend become tomorrow's standard?

A few years ago, we might have questioned SaaS' ability to hold strong once the economy began to recover. At the onset of the recession SaaS on demand services were in the right place at the right time. As software companies were producing higher costs, cloud-based solutions became the perfect fit. Monthly subscriptions, lower upfront investment and user-friendly SaaS managed services were hard to pass up.

Whatever your view on the current state of the economy, the fact is we are not in panic mode anymore and the SaaS infrastructure continues to gain traction. Major players like Walmart, Thomson Reuters and the US Government have given their approval to the cloud.

IT would take a major shift, as major as the recession in 2008, to redirect the future reality where SaaS is the leading software solution for companies moving forward.