Microsoft Leads in Burgeoning SaaS Market; Oracle and Google are on a Charge

RENO, NV, March 9, 2017

New Q4 data from Synergy Research Group shows that the enterprise SaaS market grew 32% year on year to reach almost $13 billion in quarterly revenues, with ERP and collaboration being the highest growth segments. For the third successive quarter Microsoft is the clear leader in overall enterprise SaaS, having overtaken long-time market leader Salesforce. Other leading SaaS providers include SAP, Oracle, Adobe, ADP, IBM, Workday, Intuit, Cisco and Google. Among the major SaaS vendors those with the highest growth rates were Oracle and Google, the latter thanks to a big push for its G Suite collaborative apps. The enterprise SaaS market is somewhat mature compared to other cloud markets like IaaS and PaaS and consequently has a lower growth rate. Nonetheless, Synergy forecasts that it will more than double in size over the next three years, with strong growth across all segments and all geographic regions.

“There are a variety of factors driving the SaaS market which will guarantee substantial growth for many years to come,” said John Dinsdale, a Chief Analyst and Research Director at Synergy Research Group. “Traditional enterprise software vendors like SAP, Oracle and IBM are all pushing to convert their huge base of on-premise software customers to a SaaS subscription relationship. Meanwhile relatively new cloud-based vendors like Workday and Zendesk are aggressively targeting the enterprise market and industry giants Microsoft and Google are on a charge to grow their subscriber bases, especially in the collaboration market.”