As the Software as a Service (SaaS) market is maturing, we’re beginning to see acquisitions and consolidation.
On Forbes.com, Sramana Mitra has an excellent analysis of the recent Intuit acquisitions.
I think she’s correct on the acquisitions/mergers directions for SaaS now it’s maturing.
The other driver is that as SaaS matures, the base services become commodities where it’s hard for providers to turn a profit. To build revenue they have to climb up the value chain by offering more value-add services on top of the base… acquisitions are a faster way for the larger SaaS consolidators to do that.
I think Intuit will likely be one to watch in this space, in addition of course to the likes of Google, Oracle, and Microsoft.
But not all consolidators will succeed – there’s a lot involved in turning a traditional software license-driven business into a SaaS model as I’ve discussed before in this article on the impact of software trends.
