The success of on demand delivery model as demonstrated largely by the success (so far) of Sales Force (http://www.salesforce.com/) shows that complex business software offerings can be made to businesses without having to ever visit the customer site. In other words, you can almost do away with the IT infrastructure in terms of man, machine resources that are traditionally required for on-premise installations. Of course, there are downsides. The biggest being the reluctance of businesses to host their data offsite.

However, sales force has started a trend that offers a viable deployment model. A model that is attracting hordes of NEW customers.

Are the cash registers ringing again for business software vendors with the new customer base that is up for grabs? Does this sound like a new growth market that ERP vendors have been looking for?

A note of caution: Sales Force offers a small piece of functionality as compared to the ERP. Does then the Sale Force model scale to the ERP world?

-amit