Nearly all organisations (95%) are planning to either maintain or increase their use of software as a service (SaaS) during 2010, figures from IT industry analyst Gartner show.

The group’s survey of 170 IT management and business professionals found that the high cost of total ownership and hefty integration requirements were two of the primary drivers behind the move away from licensed software.

Gartner’s research also demonstrated that the scope for which SaaS deployments are used had broadened in recent years, with email, accounting, customer service and sales force automation currently being the most popular business uses.

“SaaS applications clearly are no longer seen as a new deployment model by our survey base, with almost half of those surveyed affirming use of SaaS applications in their business for more than three years,” commented Gartner’s research director Sharon Mertz.

Meanwhile, in the UK, spending on cloud computing services will double within the next two years to over £1.2 billion, according to estimates by IT analyst company TechMarketView.

“In the old days, big companies used to generate their own electricity. But they do not do that any more”, TechMarketView senior analyst Philip Carnelley told BBC News. “Software is going the same way – let others do the processing.” Carnelley added that he and other industry analysts were not hyping up the cloud, but that a genuine shift was taking place in the UK.

TechMarketView claims that cloud-based services currently account for about 7.5% of the UK’s total software market.