Research ETRM / CTRM in the Cloud | Page 17

CTRM in the Cloud

Discussion of Results
The first thing to notice about this survey is that European responses outnumber North American responses. As
previously mentioned, this is a first in global research projects with which we’ve been associated, and it may be
relevant in terms of future adoption of SaaS/Cloud CTRM products. Could it be that Europeans are more
amenable to SaaS/cloud for E/CTRM deployment than North Americans? While there is not enough evidence in
our study to be able to make a firm conclusion, it is true that fully 50% of our respondents that indicated they
would not be willing to procure an E/CTRM solution via the cloud are based in North America. Given this high
negative, it could be an indication that CTRM in the cloud is not as interesting in North America as elsewhere,
but it is just a hint and cannot be statistically proven through our data.
The Gartner study8 found that the reasons companies might choose to not deploy applications (generalized and
not specific to E/CTRM) via a SaaS model actually varied by geography. According to Gartner, limited flexibility
of customization and limited integration to existing systems were the primary reasons in North America. In
EMEA, network instability was the issue most frequently encountered, whereas longer-than-expected
deployments were the top issue in Asia/Pacific.

Growing Acceptance

In comparison to previous surveys, the idea of procuring an E/CTRM solution delivered as SaaS or hosted in the
cloud seems to be a much more acceptable alternative to our respondents. Those that said ‘no’ are significantly
less numerous (less than 20%), but they appear to be entrenched in their opinions, scoring SaaS/hosted lower
than the traditional on-premises delivery across almost every characteristic or attribute tested. Other than the
fact that 50% of these ‘no’ respondents are located in North America, there is no other observable pattern or
demographic differences evident in the data…they do not necessarily seem to represent larger trading firms, for
example. They are simply a vocal minority that feel very strongly that E/CTRM software needs to be delivered
on-premises within the confines of their companies’ IT infrastructure.
Despite the increased willingness to consider SaaS and hosted in the cloud delivery as an option, there are
indications in the results that the issue is still not yet fully decided, as a couple of the respondents did provide
comments regarding the need to convince their management, or risk management group, as to the acceptability
of these deployment methods. Further, several of the respondents noted that they were undecided about how
to proceed in terms of making an actual procurement decision, meaning they could fall either way when it came
time to make that decision. Though not necessarily explicit in the results, we do feel that there is a sense that
for the majority of potential buyers, anything but traditional on-premises deployment could still be seen as a
potentially risky decision internally. Nonetheless, the pendulum of acceptance for CTRM via the cloud does
certainly appear to be swinging. However, given the inability of our respondents to identify vendors of these
solutions (much less leaders), it’s clear that those vendors that want to compete in this space need to better
educate the market and provide some visible success stories.

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Forecast: Software as a Service, All Regions, 2010-2015, 1H12 Update. Gartner 2012 report.

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