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Companies in western Europe have reached the stage where they are ready to adopt software as a service (SaaS), according to a new study.

Research carried out by IDC found that 37 per cent of IT bosses polled say they would consider investing in such solutions in the next two years.

Some 35 per cent said they would look to replace existing CRM solutions, while 32 per cent said they were looking for supply chain management solutions.

“We believe SaaS spending will be directed at new applications and at replacement of broken applications, rather than at ripping and replacing working solutions,” said Bo Lykkegaard from IDC.

“European organisations seek to leverage the SaaS delivery model to reduce risk, complexity, and upfront costs of new IT initiatives.”

A recent study from BIW Technologies found that SaaS revenues are likely to double by 2011 to reach £2.5 billion a year.

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About £3 billion of investment could be being thrown away by British small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) on sites that have little search engine presence.

This is according to a new study conducted by Microsoft’s adCenter unit, which suggested that not enough time and money is being devoted to effective search marketing strategies, leading to little visibility for SMEs’ websites.

Although more than three-quarters of SMEs have experienced a surge in sales as a direct resulting of making sure their sites show up in search results, 44 per cent of respondents said they found search marketing too time consuming.

A further 56 per cent said they thought it was too expensive a process, while 33 per cent cited complexity as an off-putting factor.

‘UK SMEs are missing a trick by not investing in search marketing campaigns,’ commented Nigel Leggatt, Microsoft adCenter’s marketing manager, according to vnunet.com.

‘In today’s world, just having a website is not enough.’

The Search Marketing Expo is set to take place in London on November 15th and 16th to advise marketers on how to improve their campaigns and boost site visitor numbers as a result.

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