This is the first in a series of articles looking at emerging technologies increasingly used by distributors in their businesses. This article looks at cloud computing, which continues to grow in popularity as a way to deliver business processes over the Web.

Full Emerging Technologies Series is available here.

Software as a service (SaaS) is anticipated to grow 20 percent to $12 billion in revenue this year, according to IT research company Gartner.

Yet in an industry with tight margins and a reluctance to invest in new technologies, SaaS, a variation of cloud computing that is the use of Web-based services to support business processes, is viewed with a critical eye among distributors.

But as more companies adopt cloud technology for their business, the service is becoming difficult to ignore.