Just as SaaS presents end-user organisations with an unparalleled opportunity to scale applications out to their global operations without investing in infrastructure that spans the planet, it also presents a similar opportunity to software providers.

OILspace is a US-headquartered software developer that builds business applications tailored to the petroleum industry. It operates critical systems for some of the world’s largest oil companies, including Russia’s third largest, TNK-BP.

The company uses OILspace’s ASPect Energy Trade Risk Management (ETRM) system to monitor the activities of its partners, suppliers and customers, as well as contractual and regulatory changes in their engagements. The system uses this information to calculate the risk involved in any given deal.

That has significantly cut the administrative overhead of approving deals, and in doing so has reduced the time it takes to get approval on any particular contract from 12 hours to six.

So successful has the ETRM deployment been that TNK-BP is now deploying full supply chain management capabilities from OILspace, and deploying the ASPect Office tool as the front end through which customers can specify requirements.

While none of this has been enough to insulate TNK-BP from plunging oil prices, the fact that an American software service company is operating key business applications of a Russian oil giant from its operations in London provides a taster of the revolutionary impact of SaaS.