Managers are looking more closely at hosted business applications as the number of unfinished IT projects grows, skilled workers become increasingly scarce, and upgrade and maintenance costs skyrocket.
Many large companies had long avoided hosted services because of concerns about security, customization, integration and long-term costs.
But in recent interviews, IT managers at some enterprises said they are turning to, or at least evaluating, hosted products as a way to offload management of some non-mission-critical applications. Further, some say the subscription-based pricing model can keep IT budget costs consistent and often lower than packaged or homegrown software.
Source: Computerworld, http://computerworld.com