Research firm TechNavio has announced the results of a survey of the Global SaaS-based Enterprise Content Management (ECM) Market, and is projecting healthy growth, with a CAGR of 31.11 percent from 2013-2018.

While on-premise ECM held a 90.73 percent share in the Global ECM market in 2013, its share is expected to decrease by 2018.

Traditionally, the biggest advantage of on-premise software is that it gives businesses complete control over their critical data, as opposed to SaaS-based models wherein the solution is hosted in the cloud and accessed via the web. The solution is deployed and managed by cloud service providers, and end-users are able to use the service on a pay-per-use model.

The growing need to easily access data and reduce the total cost of ownership will start to drive enterprises towards adopting SaaS-based models over the projected period, say lead TechNavio analysts.

“SaaS-based ECM provides all the benefits of on-premise ECM systems in a trouble-free environment so that customers can focus on their core business activities while achieving a significant reduction in the total cost of ownership,” says Faisal Ghaus, Vice President of TechNavio research.

With the cloud-based model, the risk and resource requirements associated with the responsibility for continuous operation, backups, updates, and infrastructure maintenance are shifted from internal IT departments to vendors or service providers.”