Two major global developments in the SaaS (Software as a Service) world show the blue sky is really here today.

1. Citibank goes Salesforce.com

The turning point has arrived for the move to Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) as a global business trend with Citigroup dropping Microsoft, SAP and Oracle for 30,000 staff in order to switch to Salesforce.com as their CRM. Read more on Reuters.

The world’s largest bank is not alone. Citibank joins a handful of other major companies with over 20,000 staff using Salesforce.com including Japan Post which has 60,000 users on Salesforce.com according to the press release.

Salesforce.com claim to be the world’s largest on-demand (SaaS) customer relationship management system. By our estimates they are on track to beat US$800m revenue over the next year.

2. Someone big goes Google Docs

Just as interesting is a rumour just in from Menlo Park USA that Google is about to sign a single corporate account with 30,000 staff to switch from Microsoft Office to Google Docs and the corporate version of Gmail (which we think is cool).

If you haven’t seen Google Docs personal edition or the business version called Google Apps for my domain you should, they are excellent productivity tools and enablers for moving from old style software to full SaaS, just like Saasu.com is financial management. The easiest way to start with just a personal email account (you can work up to the other stuff) is called Gmail.

For those who did not see the earlier launch, Saasu.com already integrates instantly with Salesforce.com right now.