The ‘90s have been dominated in Europe by the aftermath of the fall of the iron curtain. Eastern-European markets, which had been marked by the principles of the planned economy, were opened towards capitalism. Then a chaotic increase ensued, which left no industry untouched. Some mammoths, such as metallurgy, steel industry and mining, fall into the category of losers; however, a new species started developing, distinguishing itself among the winners, namely the information technology in general and software development in particular.

In “Big Data: A Revolution That Will Transform How We Live, Work and Think” authors Viktor Mayer-Schonberger and Kenneth Cukier begin by presenting the situation of the year 2009, when the virus H1N1 represented a major concern for World Health Organisation and, in particular, for the American government. The rapid evolution of the epidemics created difficulties for CDC (Centre for Disease Control and Prevention), a governmental agency, as it reported the situation with a delay of 2 weeks in comparison to the reality in the field, partly because the population did not come into contact with the medical personnel after the first symptoms appeared. Real-time reporting would have allowed for a better understanding of the size of the epidemics, an optimisation of the prevention and treatment tactics, actions with the potential of saving lives in a disaster which ultimately amounted to 284,000 victims.

It is no longer a surprise for anyone that we live in hyper-dynamic times, when the rhythm imposed by the new trends and technologies creates an environment favorable to those who are capable of adapting quickly, anticipating the positions the market is going to adopt. Companies are thus under pressure to increase their agility, and according to the lessons learnt during the last few decades, the most efficient manner of reaching this goal is by concentrating the efforts of the company on the aspects that really matter and at the same time by externalizing those functions that can be managed more efficiently by external experts.

Forrester Research company indicates that by 2020 the global cloud computing market will reach USD 160 billion, 83% of which will consist of SaaS solutions. Regardless of the accuracy of predictions, one thing is certain – SaaS will have a major impact on the ISV companies whose revenues are based on license sales.