As budgets are being set for 2009, your company is looking to save money. Due to budget constraints, the help desk and customer service software markets are really moving rapidly toward Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) to save a lot of money.
The Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) approach can significantly lower your annual costs and provide a better product. SaaS can significantly decrease capital, deployment, labor, operations, network, training, support and intangible costs.
According to Gartner Group, a global IT research firm, the annual cost to own and manage software applications can be up to four times the cost of the initial purchase. As a result, companies end up spending more than 75% of their total IT budget just on maintaining and running existing systems and software infrastructure.1 The number of software applications that a company may need are infinite. The resources to operate these applications however are finite.
1 Timothy Chou, The End of Software, SAMS Publishing, 2005, page 6
Here is a great White Paper on Saving Money with SaaS. See https://www.givainc.com/wp/save-money-software-as-a-service-saas.cfm