Hosted CRM is hot, hot, hot. Salesforce.com has topped 8,400 customers and 120,000 subscribers, NetSuite is doubling its sales team and expanding abroad, and RightNow Technologies has achieved 20 quarters of consecutive growth. So CRM magazine posed the question, "Will hosted CRM ever eclipse on-site CRM in terms of popularity?"

John Ragsdale, research director, CRM practice, Forrester Research:

There's no answer. In the midmarket it's possible, but in the enterprise space the depth of integration needed will call for very complex hosted solutions. Some large enterprises really need tight integration between the front and back office, so their CRM will always be on site. But in the midmarket, hosted CRM functionality is improving to the point where companies are not losing any features by going with a hosted solution.

Mike Doyle, chairman and CEO, Salesnet:

The shift from last generation's CRM systems to the software-as-a-service model has been under way for the past few years. The recent backpedaling of the client/server CRM vendors is proof of this. I believe that as more and more companies experience the advantages of the hosted model, such as affordability, ease of use, high accessibility, and tangible ROI, the total number of hosted solution deployments will eclipse the number of premise-based implementations. It will take time for enterprises to deprogram from the old way of thinking, but I predict that within the next three to five years online CRM will be the default choice for aspiring organizations, from small to large companies, everywhere.