Many organizations are torn between hosting their online Corporate University themselves, or getting someone else to host it for them.

A survey conducted by Gartner Inc. in late 2008 concluded that nearly 90 percent of organizations expect to maintain or grow their usage of software as a service (SaaS), citing cost-effectiveness and ease/speed of deployment as primary reasons for adoption. In fact, more than one-third of respondents indicated plans to transition from on-premises to SaaS, citing total cost of ownership (TCO) and unmet performance expectations with on-premises solutions as key decision factors.

“Use of SaaS has been evolving during the past decade and the SaaS model has become increasingly popular over the past three or four years,” said Sharon Mertz, research director at Gartner. “Our survey indicates that more than 40 percent of organizations have used SaaS for more than three years, implying a growing fluency with the model within the end-user base. Users are demanding higher levels of functionality, sometimes prompting organizations to renegotiate their contracts early to opt for more feature-rich solutions, or to add more users as the organizational footprint expands.”

"SaaS especially makes sense in the eLearning market" stated Luc Richard, President & CEO of Dual Code Inc., a leading eLearning solutions provider that offers a turnkey Corporate University solution under a SaaS model. "There are so many changes taking place in the eLearning industry right now that trying to keep pace with change is nearly impossible for a small to medium size company's IT department. Letting an eLearning provider manage your Corporate University means you're solution will remain leading edge without you ever having to worry about it or invest large capital sums."

Additional information is available in the Gartner report “User Survey Analysis: Software as a Service, Enterprise Application Markets, Worldwide, 2008.” The report is available on Gartner’s Web site at www.gartner.com/DisplayDocument?ref=g_search&id=802221&subref=simplesearch.

Additional information is available on Dual Code's Corporate University solution by visiting http://www.dualcode.com/elearning/index.htm.