Cloud growth accelerates as BigHand passes 10,000 SaaS user milestone

Global News

30
Nov
2015

Editor

Following the launch of their entry level cloud-based BigHand Professional Edition less than 3 years ago, BigHand has announced it now supports more than 10,000 users in the cloud across 700 SME’s worldwide.

Following the launch of their entry level cloud-based BigHand Professional Edition less than 3 years ago, BigHand has announced it now supports more than 10,000 users in the cloud across 700 SME’s worldwide, with demand for software-as-a-service (SaaS) solutions continuing to increase across the legal, property and healthcare sectors.

Previously perceived as an Enterprise provider predominantly for larger professional service firms and hospitals, where it supports 2,000 organisations with on-premise applications, BigHand identified that a cloud-based product could deliver significant value for SME’s. Smaller firms face a combination of ever increasing pressure on budgets, a competitive requirement to be just as efficient as larger players, and an often limited in-house IT capability. BigHand Professional, an entry level voice workflow product delivered in the cloud on an annual subscription basis, and offering compatibility with any smartphone or hardware, quickly proved popular.

Cloud-based technologies are changing the way many smaller professional services firms process their work.  Jonathan Kidd, Managing Partner at Holroyd Miller, West Yorkshire based estate agents, adds: “We chose BigHand’s SaaS solution because it gives us access to all the functionality but without the headache of managing the infrastructure and support ourselves. I was extremely happy with how quickly we were able to swap from our old system and it only took just a couple of hours before we were able to continue work as normal. It feels like we have come out of the dark ages compared to our old software; BigHand gives us much more visibility and allows us to work from multiple offices and while we are out and about which is perfect.”

Dan Speed, Managing Director of Cloud Services at BigHand comments: “While some vendors look to initiate a transition to SaaS by migrating their existing on-premise customers, that did not make sense to us as our Enterprise client base was very satisfied and we had some exciting plans for that product line. So we looked for new areas we could grow into and deliver value. While it is pleasing some 700 smaller firms have now come on board, we believe we just at the start of the expansion of our SaaS business.”

Lee Prout, Analyst at Megabuyte, who track leading international software, IT services and telecoms companies, commented: “Less than 3 years ago BigHand launched an entry-level cloud product based on satisfying demand they had identified in the small firm space, and now have 25% of all their customer organisations on a SaaS platform. It looks like a good initial approach in order to build expertise, and the next piece of BigHand’s SaaS story now appears to be a growing interest for Enterprise Cloud solutions from larger law firms. Whilst demand for Enterprise Cloud remains very much in its infancy in the Legal sector, it will undoubtedly increase and BigHand looks well positioned to adapt.”

Dan Speed explains at an industry level, why businesses are making this move, “Firms used to face the challenge of cost versus quality or security when choosing software, putting enormous pressures on the end solution.  BigHand’s software meets the industry standard (ISO 27001 Information Security Management) and gives clients the secure platform that they need to keep data risks under control whilst offering a scalable, effective solution.”