CHENNAI: Five IT professionals have come together to float new company in the name and style of Aldea Infotech Private Ltd.

The nascent company is planning to provide SaaS (software as a service) on demand. It will focus on niche areas like business intelligence, enterprise relationship planning and customer relationship management. The young outfit will target the SMEs (small and medium enterprises).

Typically, Aldea will invest in the software and infrastructure. Further, it will develop standard industry-specific applications for onward sale. SMEs, which pay subscription, can use these applications through the web.

According to Siva Lakshmanan, Chief Executive Officer, use of SaaS would help companies derive huge cost advantage, since they paid only a fraction of the cost they would have otherwise done. Addressing a press conference here on Friday, he said going in for SaaS would involve an investment of just one-tenth of what a corporate would have incurred if it had gone in for direct buying of software.

SaaS, he said, as a concept, was fast spreading across the software industry.

Essentially, it is targeted at SMEs, which pine to harness the advantage of IT to improve productivity and process but are constrained by costs.

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