On-demand software(⇒ Wikipedia) is playing an increasingly important role in small and medium-sized entities (SME). This is the result of a corresponding survey commissioned by salesforce.com carried out among 1000 SME. According to the survey 69 percent of the companies questioned generally consider web-based business solutions to be of interest, with major SME employing more than 1000 people (81 percent) being markedly more open to this approach than minor SME (61 percent).
The SME surveyed regard the on-demand concept as particularly suitable for the following web-based services: Internet portals (58 percent), shop solutions (57 Prozent) and service management (49 percent) are considered to be the main fields of implementation, followed by procurement applications (40 percent) and CRM (29 percent). However, 59 percent of the smaller companies interviewed think that internal electronic data processing systems should be
operated by internal staff only, whereas only 31 percent of major SME share this opinion. Further information is available on the salesforce.com website. 