What is the future of Software as a Service applications in an enterprise environment? The growth of business services provided by applications like Salesforce.com and Google Docs demonstrates this interest in enterprise business models is making headway. Cloud computing has caught the attention of many businesses. The current economic crisis has forced companies to be creative with fewer budgets (significantly smaller than in the past). Companies are slowly scaling existing on-premises applications and moving to the cloud to stay competitive while keeping costs low and finding innovative solutions to improve their business. Licensing, upgrades, maintenance – these tasks no longer need to be performed by internal IT staff. Internet-based computing or cloud computing is on the rise because businesses use the Internet to provide users with access and sharing of technology. According to a 2011 survey conducted by the Yankee Group and published by Business Wire, IT decision makers are becoming increasingly aware of the potential cost savings and productivity gains offered by cloud services and are trying to understand how to best implement such services. Businesses are facing accelerated changes, both domestically and globally, that increase the demand for simplicity. Technologies associated with cloud computing provide an innovative approach to creating a dynamic enterprise that enables hosted integration (no internal software required) with third-party applications. Software as a Service (SaaS) is a service provided via the cloud or the Internet in which applications are hosted by a vendor using a vendor's IT infrastructure. SaaS is a multi-tenant application where multiple companies and users can have access to...... half of the document ......y. The more the cloud matures, the more functionality and reliability it will be able to offer. Works Cited Anand V. Hudli, Balasubrahmanya Shivaradhya and Raghu V. Hudli. 2009. Tier 4 SaaS Applications for Healthcare. In Proceedings of the Second Annual Bangalore Computing Conference (COMPUTE '09). ACM, New York, NY, USA, Article 19, 4. Anonymous. Mobility is the primary driver of enterprise SaaS adoption. Company thread. New York: July 11, 2011. Portfolio.com. The future of cloud computing: a long-term forecast. http://www.portfolio.com/views/columns/dual-perspectives/2009/03/09/A-Long-Term-Forecast/ (accessed July 12, 2011).Shimrat, Ofer. 2009. Cloud computing and healthcare. Technology issues: 26-29. Security white paper: Google Apps messaging and collaboration products. http://www.scribd.com/doc/34065899/Google-Apps-Security (accessed July 12, 2011).