This spring has seen corporate performance management (CPM) move squarely into the cloud, propelled by Host Analytics, a player that didn’t even find a place as a niche player or challenger among the quadrants (Niche, Challengers, Visionaries, Leaders) of the latest Gartner CPM Magic Quadrant report. However, the research firm did give a shout-out in the report to Host and competitor Adaptive Planning as CPM SaaS players.

According to Gartner, the market for CPM hit $1.8 billion in license and maintenance revenue in 2007, representing 19 percent year-on-year growth. Driving the growth is the replacement of spreadsheets for CPM by products with built-in analytics. Maybe, but spreadsheets remain the preferred CPM tool by the actual users, and a CPM product that doesn’t export its data to Excel is doomed. You can find the Gartner report here.

Gartner is bullish on SaaS CPM, highlighting Host and Adaptive Planning. Although the SaaS CPM market, according to Gartner, is still in its infancy, it is showing momentum. As for Host, the researcher notes: “As more firms look to SaaS options for deployment, Host Analytics will benefit due to strong reference clients that have found value with its solutions.”

As a SaaS player, Host is doing the right things. It uses true multitenancy, which allows it to capture the cost savings inherent in the SaaS model. Other companies provide a hosted service in which they run a single instance for each customer, which is more costly to support.

Host also stores the information as standard SQL data. At Host, customers own their data and if they decide to end the vendor relationship, they can take their data in standard SQL format and go anywhere with it. Other vendors lock in customers by trapping their data in a proprietary format only they can handle.

Host also has teamed up with some new partners. Of note are Boomi, a SaaS player that provides integration with other SaaS products and on-premise systems — integration is a glaring weak link in many SaaS offerings — and NeoClarus, which brings XBRL capabilities, something that should be of particular interest to the finance group. A team edition of Host handles financial consolidation.

So how much is SaaS-based CPM going to cost you? Host charges $58 per user/month (5-user minimum). The team edition costs more. Of course, you already have Excel, bought and paid for, but Excel for CPM is challenging. to say the least. Any CPM tool will be more effective and easier. ###