I was at the SunGard analyst conference and heard their CEO Chris Conde talking about Software as a Service (SaaS). What he said told me that SunGard is serious about SaaS not just as a vendor but as a customer. He said that if a vendor offered SaaS to SunGard he would prefer that SunGard use this even if there is greater vendor risk and poorer features and functionality. He believes that the SaaS vendor will likely catch up on the latter, and clearly thinks so highly of SaaS that he believes the former is not such a big issue. Celent has written about this subject and the other hot buzz word cloud in the Celent report Cloud Computing, SaaS, and Technology Outsourcing for Banks http://www.celent.com/124_2513.htm You can also hear the author of this report, Jeff Goldberg speak on this issue tomorrow December 3. http://www.celent.com/124_2401.htm SaaS has been available to banks for decades. We call it a service bureau. It isn't the next big thing, but an already huge thing in banking. I am not yet a believer in cloud computing for banks due to security issues, but SaaS is clearly a winner.