Even with dramatic cost and time savings, the perception of software as a service (SaaS) applications with on demand delivery can sometimes be misunderstood. Some see SaaS in the IT back alley known as service oriented architecture (SOA). Others think web browser on the front end and hosted ERP applications in the backroom. But with the rising popularity of on demand services on the consumer front, it’s only a matter of time before on demand takes center stage.

A recent Baseline article using data from The Cutter Consortium reported that “about a third of all organizations are using on-demand applications, and that 43% are considering it.” Citing salesforce.com’s outages, there’s a “look before you leap” message due to customers facing some vendor challenges.

We think it clearly depends on the platform approaches these other on demand vendors have taken and which customers you ask. If you talk to nearly a third of global Fortune 100 enterprises who have been using on demand talent management from Taleo, you may hear a different story.

Here’s a look at the performance of this proven on demand technology platform. In 2006 alone, Taleo processed 4 billion customer transactions, nearly 30 million applications, and more than 850,000 hires — all with better than 99.9% system availability. We believe this scale of consistent success is unmatched in the on demand technology arena. You simply cannot overlook the power of this kind of proven scalable, reliable, open, and global on demand platform.

With Google and Microsoft strongly backing SaaS strategies, stay tuned to the accelerating appearance of on demand applications nearly everywhere. Here is what Jeff Kaplan of THINKstrategies says in his article Changing channels: new ways to do business at NetworkWorld.com:

“The proliferation of on-demand services in our personal lives has made many of us receptive to a comparable set of on-demand services to satisfy our professional needs.”