Chris Laping, CIO of restaurant chain Red Robin, based in Greenwood Village, Colo., believes we're in the middle of a significant shift that favors start-ups – moving from huge applications with extensive features to task-based activities, inspired by the apps running on mobile devices.

Mirco Mueller concurs. He is an IT architect for St. Gallen, Switzerland-based Helvetia Swiss Life Insurance Co., which – having been founded in 1858 – is about as far from being a start-up as possible. He recently chose a SaaS tool from an unnamed start-up over what he calls "a much more powerful but much more complex alternative. Its list of features is shorter than the feature list of the big companies, but in terms of agility, flexibility, ease of use and adjustable business model, it beat" all of its competitors.

The biggest advantage of start-ups, in Mueller's opinion? "They have no technical historical burden, and they don't care about many technical dependencies. They deliver easy-to-use technology with relatively simple but powerful integration options."

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