PUNE, INDIA: "For years we heard that SaaS is only great for small companies and non-profits. For years we heard that SaaS is only great for things with minimal data security requirements. But we successfully busted that paradigm and are now delivering mission critical systems," writes Laef Olson, chief information officer of RightNow in his blog.

He has a new big announcement to cite as a relevant example too.

Recently RightNow has delivered a SaaS solution for the US Department of Defense and Federal Civilian agencies.

RightNow Technologies has put in defense-ready hosting capabilities designed to support both the Department of Defense (DoD) and other civilian government and intelligence agencies that require stringent, evolving levels of compliance and security. Two commands within the DoD have made the decision to move ahead with this new offering, said its press release.

Olson writes, " As you can imagine, this was no small undertaking and one we had been working on for some time.""For years we heard that SaaS is only great for the private sector, but the certification and security demands of the public sector forced them into an expensive on-premise model. We provide SaaS services for a variety of finance, telco, and e-commerce firms with strict PII & PCI security and compliance requirements." he adds.

“Our new secure hosting capabilities will help our DoD clients to tap into the cloud and experience the benefits of software delivered as a service (SaaS). The DoD requires a more intense level of security than most civilian agencies and we are proud to be the first on demand CRM vendor capable of meeting their needs,” said Greg Gianforte, CEO and founder, RightNow on the company site.

“In the last year, our North America public sector sales grew 66 per cent, showing the demand for cloud based CRM is growing among government agencies. Under the Obama administration’s mandates of transparency, collaboration and efficiency the need for our SaaS CRM will only continue to increase.” added Kevin Paschuck, vice president, public sector, RightNow.

The company has been in the CRM business since 1997and develops CRM products for corporations, government agencies, and educational institutions with about 1,900 corporations and government agencies in its roster so far.