I always thought that the Software-as-a-Service market would expland during a recessionary economy because:

1) Companies don’t have capital dollars to buy software

2) The ability to pay-as-you-go appeals to CFO’s

3) No infrastructure to buy, since it is hosted or in the cloud.

But this was a real surprise.   According to IDC,  2009 will be a breakout year for SaaS!  Robert Mahowald, research director at IDC says “SaaS thrives in down cycles, and as with the 2000 - 2001 downturn that gave Salesforce.com its start, the current freeze in IT and related Capex spending will help assure solid growth for most SaaS providers.”  Read the whole article.