Software-as-a-service solutions are being adopted by small and medium-size businesses at twice the rate they were four years ago, with 21 percent of small businesses and 31 percent of medium-size companies currently using SaaS.The numbers are taken from Access Markets International (AMI) Partners, Inc.?s 2008 U.S. Small and Medium Business Applications & Solutions Market Overview. According to the report, the rising adoption rate is driven by SMB's need for IT solutions that are easy to use, implement, and maintain with limited resources. The most popular uses for SaaS among SMBs include banking and finance, payroll processing, and human resources management, and the report found strong interest in implementing collaborative and business intelligence solutions over the next 12 months.

According to Sau Lam, Business Applications & Solutions Analyst at AMI Partners, the trend "is partly due to the growing number and variety of SaaS offerings by established IT vendors such as Microsoft, SAP, IBM, Google and salesforce.com. Besides the participation of these heavyweights, smaller vendors such as Longjump and Coghead are targeting SMBs directly.Yahoo Finance