Post authored by Danny Johnson of the NetDocuments Sales and Marketing Team

Every year Gartner, Inc. identifies the 10 strategic technologies for the year ahead. It released the 2010 edition in October and I found the results very interesting.

For Gartner to consider a technology, a "strategic technology," it must have the "potential for significant impact on the enterprise in the next three years. Factors that denote significant impact include a high potential for disruption to IT or the business, the need for a major dollar investment, or the risk of being late to adopt."

In the late 90's when NetDocuments was founded, we were one of the worlds first SaaS companies and have since witnessed first hand the evolution of the SaaS market. Recently, Service-Now.com released a white paper titled, "A Brief History of SaaS," and I found it very accurate and informative.

The white paper begins by discussing where traditional boxed software comes up short and how this created the need for SaaS: