Customer relationship management applications are still the largest segment of the ballooning software-as-a-service market.

Mounting evidence suggests that in 2010, the hottest segment in BI (business intelligence) software will revolve around offerings delivered from the cloud, thanks to increased product sophistication, strained IT budgets and other factors.

NASA is aiming to improve its climate research capabilities by creating a software-as-a-service interface for scientists and students who need to build complex climate models.

For Logiq the decision to go with a cloud-based provider of IT infrastructure as a service (IaaS) was a matter of cost and flexibility.

Even experienced developers can run into problems developing and deploying custom applications for software-as-a-service platforms because SaaS vendors don't always embrace the accepted corporate processes for build, test and release. The trick is to adapt your configuration management processes to meet SaaS challenges.