The New York weather is cooling down, but the benefits of Software as a Service are heating up. The SaaS market is forecasted to grow at a CAGR of 20.2% in 2012-2017, reaching US$45.6 billion by 2017. Why are so many companies adopting SaaS? Earlier this year, the IBM Center for Applied Insights released “Champions of Software as a Service: How SaaS is fueling powerful competitive advantage”, based on a global study of 879 IT and line-of-business (LOB) SaaS decision makers. We found that most organizations start their SaaS journey seeking lower total cost of ownership: It’s the #1 driver for SaaS adoption, and 41% of respondents are achieving it to a high degree. However, our research also reveals that competitive advantage is an even bigger outcome, with 47% of enterprises reporting a competitive edge courtesy of SaaS. Digging deeper, we wanted to see which industries are leading the pack, and which are lagging behind. ibm.com/ibmcai/saas