There are both views on the switch to, and reports of the growth in, Software as a Service (SaaS) with Gartner suggesting that 50% of the software deployed in 2010 will be in this form. Actually this is one of four new forms in addition to the traditional license implementation, each of which has its own particular place in the broader use of software. Indeed the key principle to grasp with these new provisioning forms is that they mostly relate to the new generation of “services” rather than traditional “applications”. A closer look at the when and where to use each option together with the normal review of news from the IT industry is in this month’s technology brief.