Gartner, the world’s leading IT research firm, recently released their list of Top 10 Technologies for 2008 that touched on a couple of SaaS-related technologies and trends. Those of you who follow our blog will recall the post I did last week on Software as a Service: Alphabet Soup were I examined some of the emerging terms and acronyms in the SaaS space. In their top 10 list, Gartner talks about the idea of SaaS-related Web Platforms (Web-Oriented Architecture or WOA) as one of the potential next big things.

What is WOA?
Depending on who you ask, WOA (Web-Oriented Architecture) is either SOA (Service-Oriented Architecture) on steroids or a web-based “cloud computing” environment. Gartner sees them as “providing service-based access to infrastructure services, information, applications, and business processes”, while other’s like Nick Gall are simply using WOA to refer to SOA that uses a more modern and flexible XML protocol - REST (a less complex method of using XML to communicate with applications) as opposed to SOAP (an older, more complex approach to the same problem).

What about SaaS?
Enough tech-babble and back to business! Gartner points out that “Software as a service (SaaS) is becoming a viable option in more markets and companies must evaluate where service based delivery may provide value in 2008-2010,” and sees web platforms and the natural progression to SaaS. Along with the their previous projections, it looks like the next couple of years will mean good business for SaaS application providers!

Mashups, Composite Apps, and Social Software
Mashups and composite applications continue to enjoy the technology spotlight. For those unfamiliar with these terms, mashups actually come from the music industry and refers to applications that combine data from more than one source into a single application. Composite applications are similar, except they consume enterprise and enterprise-ready sources versus Internet-based sources. Gartner also sees consolidation in the enterprise Web 2.0 product environment (also known as Enterprise 2.0) and companies increasing buying social software and collaborative technologies, good news for companies playing in that space!

Conclusions
Its good to see Gartner continued support of the overall SaaS movement. Some of you old enough to remember know that Gartner has always been a proponent of cost-cutting through it support of technologies and services like network computing, outsourcing and most recently SaaS. Also encouraging is the appetite enterprise continue to have for Web 2.0 technologies and their ability to embrace SaaS as an acceptable software delivery model.